Crossed lives
by Anyathethief
Summary: Since she was a child, Viktoria has been dreaming about a girl. A girl who looks like her. But she's holding a baby in her arms and she's dressed like a Queen. Viktoria lives in Vienna in the 40's. What does she have to do with that Queen? This is not an usual Annamis. Don't judge the book from its cover (however, it's a terrific one! Thanks to my beloved friend Kat!)
1. Chapter 1

This is the first story of mine I translate in English. Please, be gentle, I know it's probably full of mistakes, but I really want to share it with you people, because I've put a lot of effort in it! If you want to read it in Italian, just look for the original version, I'll post it very soon.

 _Chapter 1_

She was standing in a very familiar room. A bedroom, a large, large bed with a pale blue canopy. The whole room was adorned with paintings, a big tapestry, decorations on the walls that looked sculpted by the most skilled artists. A big gold-framed mirror reflected her image when she walked past it.

She saw herself marching with a pretty turquoise dress made of a fine quality cloth, her nape was left uncovered by an elaborate hairstyle adorned with pins and pearls, like those standing out around her neck and the ones dangling from her ears.

And she was holding a baby in her arms. The most beautiful baby she'd ever seen. His little round face was smiling at her carefree, shaking his little hand towards her. He was her son. A certainty that nobody could have taken away from her: he was her son.

She should have felt happy in that moment, but a great anxiety was coming up from her stomach, burning her chest. She looked outside the window and saw two men guarding the front gate, two soldiers. She suddenly started to feel helpless: she had no way of escaping. She swallowed, blinking a couple of times to repulse the tears, then a wail called her attention.

"Hey..." she whispered to the baby, caressing his face in a playful way. But then she went back looking from the window. Other three men were arriving at the castle, three men she knew very well. But they shouldn't have been just three; she vainly searched with her eyes for a fourth man.

Their light blue cloaks contrasted with their dark-leather clothes they were wearing underneath, and their large-brim hats were preventing her from seeing the faces of two of them, but there was no need: she perfectly knew who they were.

She looked at them getting off the horses and starting a discussion with the two soldiers at the door. Her eyes bounced from a faction to the other, distressed, until she heard the sound of the debate raising: when one of the men in the light blue cloaks drew a sword, she moved the curtain to keep herself from seeing more.

She held her baby and closed her eyes. She didn't want to stay there, it wasn't her place, her clothes, her bedroom. She didn't belong that world, and she didn't like the feeling she was having in that moment.

Then she heard heavy steps coming from outside the room and her instinct screamed at her to do something to block the entrance. But – as far as she could look around for some ideas – her legs were stuck and weren't answering to her orders any more.

The door opened with a thud which made her wince. She held the baby, protecting him with her body when she saw the man that she feared so much, escorted by a half dozen of guards like the ones who were watching the gate. He was fair-haired and his only blue eye to be seen looked like a precious stone embedded on a rugged bony face. The other eye was covered with a black eye-patch, which view caused in her a satisfactory wave.

He gave her a creepy smile: she wanted to beg him, to implore him to not hurt the baby, she wanted to throw herself at his feet crying and screaming.  
But she couldn't do any of that, the words were stuck in her throat in a terrifying resignation. She felt naked in front of that person. The only thing she was wearing was her pride.

"Your Majesty" said the man, bowing to her slightly and hypocritically.

She pursed her lips to force herself to not cry, to maintain that little dignity she'd left. She was a Queen. She felt like she had to face all of that like a Queen, with grace and composure. But she also was a little more than a child, though, and her force of will couldn't stop those few tears from falling down her cheeks to the thought of her child, her beloved baby. It was the thing that concerned her the most, even if she knew she was in a great danger herself.

When the fair-haired stepped aside to let her walk through the bedroom's doors, she lifted her chin up showing the behaviour that suited her, royal, a little haughty. With a determined pace she left the room.

The thud of the door closing woke up Viktoria, suddenly. She winced, and she realized she was laying in a cold sweat. She moved the blankets right away, nervous, looking for something, but when she couldn't find it, she seemed to calm down. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes, drying her forehead and trying to cool down.

She looked around: she was in her bedroom again, luckily. There was no baby there. She recognized the photos hanging on the walls, her bookshelf, her neat desk. But while she was gradually coming back to reality, she realized that something was wrong. Until she heard a familiar voice screaming her name.

"Vicky! Vicky, hurry up!"

Eva was calling her, clearly panicking. She still hadn't realized what happened, but she jumped out of bed – forgetting at all how much she wanted to take a hot shower – and she put on her slippers, bolting out of her bedroom in her nightgown.

She saw her sister supporting their grandmother, holding her arm and walking her from her bedroom to the living room, and she suddenly understood. How could she not have heard? That dream looked so real that it had made her lose any concept of reality itself... A siren started to sound in the streets, loud and clear.

Still puzzled, she shook her head to repulse the anxious thoughts about her baby... She had no baby, she didn't even have a husband. She ran to Eva, helping her to hold their grandmother. In the moment she reached her, they heard a large explosion in the distance – which made the three of them scream – and they lowered their heads covering it with their hands.

"Where's dad?" Viktoria asked, trying to speed up her grandmother's stride. Eva didn't answer the question.

The bomb shelter was a few metres distant from their house, but every time it seemed to Viktoria like a long trip. Plus, with her grandmother arm in arm, it looked like an infinite journey. Usually it was her dad who picked her up with his strong arms so they could run faster. But the previous night he hadn't come back from work: he was often late, and Viktoria in that moment wasn't able to understand how many hours or minutes had passed from when she fell asleep.

The sky outside was dark, there was a great tension in the air, few people were running in the streets and she realized in that minute that with her slowness in getting out of her room, she'd put her whole family in danger.

"Let's go, grandma!" she tried to press the old lady, who was moving a little step after the other with difficulty, dragged by her nieces. Viktoria saw a large column of black smoke rising up to the sky, from east. She heard a plane buzzing over them, then she heard a whistle. Another bomb exploded – even this one was distant, luckily – and she couldn't help closing her eyes and recall that man from her dream.

They sped up even more, until they finally reached the bomb shelter's doors, in which they crawled just before it closed. She knew that it was one of the safest shelter in Vienna, but it was also risky because once the doors were closed, they didn't open to anybody. It wouldn't have been such a big problem, there were other shelters around, after all, and they were reachable in one or two minutes running, but with their grandmother everything was more complicated. So it was a luck that they'd arrived there safe and sound.

She saw the usual faces of her neighbours that she knew pretty well. From time to time there was someone new, someone that maybe was passing by when the bombing started.

"But where's dad?" she asked her sister again, while they were sitting their grandmother on one of the two long benches against the two sidewalls of the tunnel.

"He hasn't come back. I'm sure he'll be fine." Eva tried to reassure her, with her big sister's certainty that she often showed off. Viktoria was never able to understand if she was sincere or if it was just a face. She sat, staring into distance and nervously playing with her nightgown. She didn't like to appear to strangers like that, but after all she wasn't the only one to be not properly dressed. Her sister had wisely grabbed her own robe and her grandmother too was well covered. She looked around, concerned. She almost hoped to find between those faces, her father's, but she knew it was impossible.

"That dream, again?"

Another bomb made everyone jump, this time it was a little closer, but Viktoria didn't ignore her sister's question.

"What?" she asked, to have it repeated. It was a relief to be able to talk about it.

"I said: that dream, again?" she asked again, leaning towards her, to have a better view beyond their grandmother sitting between them. The old woman seemed to be not quite in the head, like if she was somewhere else. She smiled to nobody, with her look staring the shelter's ceiling.

Viktoria nodded.

"But this time... The door opened."

Eva opened her eyes wide. Viktoria had started mentioning that dream when they were little. She would always wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, terrified; sometimes it happened just once a month, sometimes once a week. It also happened that she didn't do it for years, and then, all of a sudden... But as she recalled, that door had never opened. She used to wake up in the moment she heard the steps in the aisle. As soon as the doors started to move, the dream always ended.

"So, who was there?"

Another bomb whistled and exploded, but this time much farther than the previous. Viktoria simply ignored it, like she was completely used to it.

"A man... A fair-haired man!" she saw the woman sitting next to her sister looking at her, dazed, so she lowered her voice. "He got me out of the room... And, I don't know, everything was really strange. I was afraid of that man." she explained, passing her hand through her blond hair down on her shoulders. "I was scared for my baby." she said, so gravely that – as far as that sentence could have sounded absurd – her sister didn't laugh.

"Was he...?" she tried to ask, but her sister forestalled her.

"No. He wasn't the man I was looking for."

They stayed quiet for a while. Viktoria stared at a woman at the end of the bunker holding a five or six months baby, who was crying, sobbing and screaming. A real strong maternal instinct almost made her get up from her seat to go and help that mother. She looked down again, worried.

"I think that you have..." her sister started to say.

"Don't tell me I have..." Viktoria quickly interrupted her, imposing.

"... read it in a book." they said with one voice, the first sceptical, the second annoyed.

"I can't have read it in a book, I've been dreaming about it since I wasn't even able to read!" she'd explained it to her sister hundreds of times.

"Mum used to read us loads of books..." her sister insisted.

"... but none of this kind."

The conversation fell along with another bomb, farther and farther again from their shelter. Their mother's thought had always made both of them feel sick in their stomach. When the topic would turn out by accident in a conversation, this punctually was interrupted in a sudden.

They heard no more explosions, and the siren stopped sounding after an ample half an hour. Everyone got closer to the shelter's doors: they could finally go home. They helped the grandmother to get up and they got in line to get out as well.

"Miss." Viktoria didn't hear the man's voice behind her, or she didn't think he was addressing to her.

"Are you okay, grandma?" she asked to the old lady, who nodded smiling, still unaware of what was happening around.

"Miss." this time the girl turned around. She recognized the man who was living on the second floor of their building: he was pointing to her back. "You have a little blood on your back."

Viktoria touched her nape, clear of her long hair which she'd moved shortly before on the front. She looked at her hand covered in some dark red stains. Eva helped her to move her hair, then she reassured her.

"It's nothing, you accidentally must have scratched your mole."

Viktoria rubbed her hand trying to wipe it, then she thanked the man with a smile. That little imperfection in a such inconvenient position often annoyed her, especially when she brushed her hair, so she didn't worry that much. Others were her thoughts in that moment. Even the dream appeared to her far and blurred and despite it had sustained a deep change from the other times, she didn't care that much.

She just wanted to know if her father was fine.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

Like every other time after the bombing, life went back to normal. As far as all of that could be considered normal; Viktoria had grown up with high moral values and she couldn't stand the horrors that war was bringing to her Country and to the whole Europe. People clumped like beasts in wagons, she saw them: when she was still going to school, she used to walk past the station and would see them walking with their heads down, pushed by soldiers, beaten if they only tried to stop or dared to talk.

She wanted to do something for that people, but she sadly knew the punishment for those who revolted against the system.

But she'd never lowered her head. Never. She watched those horrible scenes bravely, facing a great challenge with herself. In those moments she felt helpless like in her dream, but in that case being somewhere else wouldn't have solved anything. With or without her, the mistreatments and the abuses on Jews would have continued.

She watched her father suffering when they walked the streets and crossed some scenes, but he used to turn around and try to open a shallow conversation to distract her. She wasn't a child any more. One day she told him and he replied, moved:

"This is not the world I want you to grow up in."

And she firmly replied: "But it's the world we're living in, and we can't pretend to be somewhere else. Mum didn't."

She read in her fathers' eyes a sincere concern and she saw the anxiety assaulting him. That subject was almost a taboo. She knew what he wanted to reply, but he may had understood himself that for how much she resembled her mother, she would never had the courage to act like she did, even if she wanted to.

But that day she stayed silent and together they watched the arrest of a Jewish family, dragged away with insults and kicks. Together they felt pity, anger and compassion and together they bore the helplessness.

Not even an hour had passed since the sirens stopped sounding. Viktoria and Eva had put their grandmother back to her bed, then they'd sat in the living room waiting, in silence, under a warm blanket. Until – with their great relief – they heard the door opening.

That episode would have been soon forgotten. It wasn't the first time that Mr. Haas came home late from work. He'd rushed back home as soon as he had got the chance to get out of the bomb shelter in complete safety.

The two girls' father ran a shoe production, but things weren't going well; all the companies were shutting down to be replaced with weapon's factories and even his beloved business was at risk. Besides, many of his employees had been forced to quit because of the racial laws; they were good people, but he didn't know what happened to them, and he regretted that so much. One of his production's strength was that among him and his workers there was an excellent relationship: they were often hosting some of them for dinner.

Many times he'd told the girls how good was that one at using that kind of machine, or how fast was the other one at sorting the shoes, and how much he missed that Jew that used to told him the funniest jokes.

The girls used to comfort him, they would say: "you'll see that they haven't caught him, he was a smart one, you'll see that he has managed to hide somewhere...", but actually, they wouldn't believe themselves neither. They used to share sceptical and worried gazes. He would smiled, grabbing their hands. "My beautiful girls... How would I do without you...?"

Viktoria, without a doubt, was the prettiest of the two. Graceful in the manner and in the poise, a heart-shaped face, crowned by long blond hair, soft and slightly waved down on her shoulders, but she usually had it up to enhance her fine long neck which gave her an elegant air. Her big blue eyes appeared like a doll's, but they definitely were more expressive, as well as her small full mouth that she often twisted when something didn't suit her. Unquestionably she was smart and she'd been taking very seriously her education, but she wouldn't mind indulging in breaks; her father as well had been encouraging her to take all the time she needed. She was still young and, by the way, many girls had been fallen behind at the university, because of what was going on.

Eva had just a couple of years more than her, but time had been more cruel on her.  
She was objectively a beautiful girl, almost as her sister, but she had a different kind of beauty, harsher. A pair of wrinkles at her mouth's sides enhanced her cheekbones when she smiled. She was blonde too, taller than Viktoria but also skinnier.

Unlike her sister, she'd learnt to lower her head in front of some situations: she wasn't strong, she didn't want to see and she didn't want to know. She often turned off the radio and the television in someone had switched them on during dinner. She lowered her head on the streets, when she would see the Germans; she lowered her head at work, on her typewriter; even when she was at school, she'd always lowered her head when she didn't want to be noticed. Only at home, in a sort of redemption, she dared to challenge the events and acted normal.

Mr. Haas was very proud of his daughters, he couldn't stop telling them how beautiful and talented they were. At first he thought about sending them to his brother's, in the mountains, to make them live safer from the bombing. But they refused. "We could never leave you here."

The taboo subject was another reason to stay together, but obviously they took it for granted. They couldn't leave him alone to face the loss.

Eva was definitely more apprehensive than her sister who, sometimes, couldn't get some basic things like helping her grandmother to cut her meat, or not listening the songs her mother used to listen, when their father was around. She always did that with a naivety that they couldn't criticise, because everyone knew that she cared about her family exactly as much as her elder sister.

Even because of this side of her, she hadn't realized the recent times' weirdness. It had been Eva the one who told her about it.

"Have you seen dad's face when he came back today? He seemed pretty upset, who knows what happened at work... Should we ask?"

Viktoria was flabbergasted.

"Come on, have you noticed that he comes home later and later? And he looks so gaunt... I hope he's not getting ill."

"I think he's fine. He may just be a little tired." Viktoria neglected, shrugging. Eva took it badly, she'd been looking for her sister's support to investigate, but once again she'd had to confront with a wall of ingenuity.

Not even two days had passed, that her suspects became true.

Viktoria woke up again in the middle of the night. Vivid in her mind the memory of her baby, the three men on their horses, the fair-haired man smiling at her; but after that, nothing more: she was again at a dead end. She got up trying not to make noise: she needed to freshen up her sweaty face. When she got out of her bedroom to go to the bathroom, though, she heard some moans from her father's bedroom.

She found him fidgeting agitated. The high temperature had made him very hot and violent shivers were shaking his whole body, making him sweat. He was loudly coughing, without even knowing.

He remained in those conditions for two full days. The doctor said to not worry, because he would have recovered in a week, but the two girls couldn't do anything but stay at his bedside for the whole time, at least until the temperature started to go down. Luckily his business partner could have handle the company on his own for a few days, so the factory didn't have to close.

At the third day's sunset he finally woke up in consciousness, despite it was obvious that bad pains were still pervading his whole body. Viktoria was sitting half-asleep in the armchair, but she immediately ran next to the bed when she saw him open his eyes.

"Dad!" she exclaimed smiling. "Are you feeling better?" she put a hand on his forehead, and she felt it was burning much less than the night before, even if he was still shaken by a continuous cough. "The doctor said you've got bronchopneumonia. But you've taken all of your antibiotics, and now you're going to feel better." she reassured him, caressing his face.

"How... How long have I been in bed?" he asked hoarse and tired.

"Two days. But don't worry, you'll be feeling okay very soon. Mr. Pohl came over to visit you and he says that everything is fine down in the factory."

Viktoria hadn't realized that her father had stopped listening to her right after she'd answered his question. He opened his eyes wide and stared at her like she was an alien, but the girl was so focused on tucking him in that she hadn't even noticed.

"Two... Two days?" he repeated, astonished. This time Viktoria realized that something was wrong and looked at him confused. "Two... Two... Oh, God." Mr. Haas covered his face with his hands, in a desperate gesture.

"What...?" the girl tried to ask, but he interrupted her right away.

"I have to go." he declared.

"N-No, you can't..." she didn't even had time to reply, that she suddenly had to block him from trying to get out of the bed.

"I have to go, let me go, honey!" he seemed determined more than ever, but a drop in his blood pressure – due to the fact that he had been laying down for two days – put him back to his place, making his daughter's work easier. His eyes rolled up and he fell on the bed like if he was a puppet and someone had just cut his strings.

"Dad! What are you doing?" Viktoria shook him by his shoulders, until he reopened his eyes, dazed.

"Wha-?"

"You have to stay in bed, you can't get up for any reason!"

Mr. Haas looked around confused, immediately recovering from his light fainting, then he stopped his gaze on his youngest daughter.

"Vicky" he severely announced. "I need you to do something for me."


	3. Chapter 3

Viktoria was walking quickly. Maybe too quickly. She suddenly slowed down, when she realized that she might have attracted too much attention in that way.  
Every noise sounded amplified: her boots' stomping, some pidegons' wings' rattle, the idle chatter of some women going home from the factories, even her dress' flapping.

She had worn the darkest dress she had, high-necked, long, her hair up in an anonymous bun. She had to appear that way, anonymous and confident. But she'd never had to do something like that before.

"Eva would never be able to do it." her father told her, to her complaint, "don't you see how she lowers her head all the time? She would be too suspicious."

How to blame him? It was absolutely true, her sister wasn't right at all for that kind of "mission", you might say.

However, Viktoria moved ahead as always, with her head held high, ignoring the Germans who usually stationed on the street's borders, always ready to pick a fight; but as long as the girl was attractive and appealing to their eyes, wearing any make-up she looked so young to make them desist to approach her even just for a routine check.

And what would they had to check after all? She wasn't carrying anything but a simple wicker basket covered with a blue towel, but you could have easily understood what was inside: a bottle of wine's neck popped out from under the towel.

She smiled when she saw coming at her a worker from his father's factory, who had often been to their house for dinner, along with his wife, a lovely girl with a funny Italian accent. She knew what she had to do.

"My dear Viktoria." the man greeted, spreading his arms with joviality.

"Hello, Mr. Leitner!" she exclaimed, pretending to be surprised. It worked out pretty well, actually. Her father had advised her that she could have met some of his workers; it was closure time, after all. But it was inevitable: she couldn't have come out too late, because it was almost getting dark, and Germans became more wary when they saw someone walking around at night.

"I've heard about your father. How is he now?" the man asked, heartbroken.

"Much better. He'll be back very soon." she assured.  
While their casual conversation was going on, Viktoria didn't omit to check the situation around them: she counted about ten workers with her father's factory jumpsuit walking along the same road, before saying goodbye to her interlocutor. She was sure she wouldn't cross anyone else on her way to the factory.

"Where are you going at such an hour?" Mr. Leitner asked.

"Ah, as if my father's illness wasn't enough... Our old aunt's got sick too. I'm bringing her some food..." she explained, casually, nodding to her basket and even lifting up the towel to show him what was under: a couple of apples, dried fruit, bread and cheese, in addition to the bottle of wine.

"Good, I let you to your visit, then. I would walk with you, but, you know, Letizia always worries when I am late!"

"Don't worry, I'll be fine! Goodbye, give my regards to your wife." she took leave calmly, without implying any sign of impatience, another mistake that Eva would have made.. Her father imposed her to talk to that one man, among all of his workers, for the simple reason that he knew very well him and his wife and he knew that Letizia always worried too much about his husband, and that he always worried too much about her concerning.

Viktoria slightly sped up. A mild impatience led mostly by curiosity, leaked out in that moment from her movements. But luckily there was no soldier in sight.

Her father's factory wasn't big, but it was big enough to host ten workers and two directors, as well as three massive machines, which had always frightened her a little. From the outside it appeared like a dark building, grey, with many windows to the street. The most difficult part had come.

She looked around hundreds of times, until she was a hundred percent sure that nobody was paying attention to her. Luckily, in that suburban area not many people used to walk at that time of the day, and by the way there weren't also many Germans around. The last group she'd seen was 500 metres behind her back.

She jammed the key into the main door with attentive movements, quickly and confidently, as she had done that millions of times before, and she turned it. She closed the door behind, checking again that anyone hadn't seen her walking in.

The light was still entering from the windows, so even if the lamps were switched off, she could see pretty well. With a hesitant pace she walked through the big hall with the machines, looking around as one of them could have come to life and attack her at any moment. She walked into her father's office and she closed the door.

She wasn't sure at all about what she was doing, but she thought that if it was dangerous, her father would have never given her a task like that. Her eyes were bouncing quickly from one side of the room to the other, then they blocked on the floor. That carpet gave her the impression of had being stepped on a few hundreds of times too often; it was consumed in some parts, it had a blue ink stain on a corner and it was discoloured in some points.

But there she was, finally, ready to discover a big secret. She thought about all the times she had visited her father to work, and it always had been on her watch... But after all she couldn't have never imagined a thing like that.

Her mother was the heroin. The one who couldn't tolerate injustice. Her father was the one who looked the other way, and then shouted at home to the radio. Viktoria was a compromise between the two of them. Eva was just like their father. Or at least this is what she'd thought until that moment.

She walked back and forth for some seconds around the carpet, then she tried to step on it. Despite it was so consumed, it still did his job: no one could have imagined to be walking on a well-hidden manhole's lid.

She looked through the window, but the curtains let pass just the light enough to allow her to see, without letting the others see her from outside.

She got on her hands and knees and moved the carpet. It was right there. For some absurd reason she'd expected not to find it, but it actually existed. With no other hesitation – her curiosity had prevailed on everything else, by now – she got her fingers in the iron ring and she strongly pulled it.

Some dust kicked up, but Viktoria saw a couple of steps and when she leaned she realized that other followed them. She grabbed an oil lamp from the desk, just in case, and she lit it: it seemed darker down there, much that even with the lamp her eyes failed to get used. She walked down not more than ten steps, before she was able to have a look around. They were so uneven that she hadn't looked anything but her feet, in fear of stumble. The ambience was humid, there was a strong smell of a cellar, probably because that was the purpose which that room was intended for, before his father bought the building.

She'd been warned about this chance too. Apparently, indeed, the room was empty. And even quite bare, she thought. The only furniture consisted in an unmade bed against the wall, a shelf with few books, a table and a chair. There were papers all over the table, a nib, some ink, a pencil and many pieces of charcoal. She noticed that a little light was entering through a narrow crack just beneath the ceiling. A little window on the inner yard of the building, which was always desert, except for the lunch time, on sunny days. She noticed another door next to the shelf.

She was curious, much curious, but she followed her father's advice and she put the basket on the bottom step. She waited a few seconds. She couldn't understand if that place infused in her a deep sadness, a slight anxiety or a warm feeling, despite it was definitely cooler than the upper floor.

Reluctantly, she turned in order to climb the stairs

"Wait, please!" a voice made her wince and turn all of a sudden, while she stretched out the lamp in front of her almost as it was a weapon.

A man came out from the darkness. In a corner where there was nobody before, a guy had appeared. He had his hands up, opened, as a sign of yield and a reassuring smile.

"I'm sorry." he begin. "I think you'll understand if I tell you that you gave me a bit of a scare when I heard you coming in." he went on, walking towards her.

Viktoria stayed still on the third step of the stair, but she wasn't scared. On the contrary, she was more and more curious of being able to see his face better. He must have had few years older than her, but maybe life's conditions had affected his appearance negatively, making him get older faster than he had to. His brow hair looked strange to her: they seemed longer in the front, but looking a little closer she realized that a hair band tied them up in a little ponytail. He had an overgrown beard and a moustache, but they weren't so long, just that much to make Viktoria think that he had the chance to shave, from time to time. On his white shirt two dark suspenders stood out and on his sleeve, carelessly sewed, a seven-pointed yellow star.

When the man was close enough to be able to see her clearly, he petrified for a few moments. Then, he smiled at her again and he did something that Viktoria may have seen like the craziest action, but which infused in her an unnatural calm instead: putting a foot on the second step and the opposite knee on the first, without ever looking away from her face, he grabbed her right hand and he kissed it.


	4. Chapter 4

For a few moments, that man's act appeared completely natural to Viktoria. Only later she realised what happened and the astonishment begin to creep into her mind. What was he thinking when he kissed her hand in that way? She didn't even know his name. And why was he staring at her insistently?

Her dad didn't tell her anything about that, she should have just put the basket down and leave, he wasn't supposed to come out and do strange things.

"Enchanté. Ben Keller, at your service."

Where did he come from? He'd got Viktoria completely off-guard, overwhelmed by the behaviour of the man who was now staring at her with a satisfactory smile. She still haven't managed to pull back her hand that he kissed a minute ago, and stood still in that funny position, her mouth half-closed for the astonishment, her eyes wide open.

"Your name...? If I could...?" he pressed, in a kind of mocking tone.

"Ah-ehm... Viktoria." she replied, pulling back her hand which she used to rub her nape, awkwardly. "Haas." she added. "Viktoria Haas." she repeated then a little more convinced.

"You are like an angel... Who has come down the stairs!" he laughed. It seemed to Viktoria that the influence of that dirty, dark place hadn't nicked his temper, even if she didn't know him before. She violently blushed. No one ever told her anything like that, and he appeared to notice her embarrassment. "For the food, I mean." he rushed to add, pointing at the basket on the step.

"Oh..." she moaned. She should have felt relieved: a man she didn't even know boldly congratulated to her, and then he took it back. That proved he wasn't a maniac. But actually she was a little disappointed, and that uncomfortable feeling that would have normally afflicted her in a scenario like that... Well, there wasn't. Not that she was feeling totally at ease; the presence of that man made her look clumsy and goofy, so much so that it didn't even come to her mind to mention her father's sudden illness, until he expressly asked.

"I suppose that Paul... Mr. Haas..."

"Oh, yes. He's my father." she rushed to intervene so hastily that she hasn't have time to think about the fact that Ben called her father by name. "He... He got sick!" she added, twisting her hands.

"He got sick?!" the man said, alarmed. "But what...? I had no..."

"No, no." she interrupted him again. "Don't worry, he'll be fine." she watched him calming down, but for a second she read fear on his face, and deeply she could understand him. Her father was the only reason that had kept him alive.

Suddenly, something drew Viktoria's attention. She realised that the light behind her had definitely decreased, and she winced.

"I have to go now!" the sun was going down, and she had promised to her father that she would have come back as fast as possible. Besides, the inspection increased after a certain hour, and even if she didn't have nothing to fear, she didn't want to get the soldier's attention.

"Will I see you again?" he asked, hopeful, once he understood that the girl was already running up the stairs. She turned for a very short instant and she nodded.

"Tomorrow. Same time. Goodbye." she hastily took leave.

With a thud, the manhole closed over his head still raised to admire as much as he could the delightful creature he had just spoken with.

He fumbled in the dark to reach the lamp on the table. He lit a low flame. He sat, grabbed a piece of paper and the cardboard box with the charcoal and he started to draw the shape of a face.

Viktoria hadn't unpleasant encounters on her way. If they had stopped her, she probably would have looked suspicious: her face was still red, and she felt like she was floating on a cloud. Her father didn't tell her much about that man, just that he owed him a favour and that he would protect him as long as he can. What favour did he do to him? She couldn't believe it. Her father, in the end, wasn't so different from her mother, maybe just smarter and close-mouthed. He hadn't told that secret to anyone for months and months... And now she was the only one to know it.

When she got nearby her house, she sped up until she almost started running to reach her apartment building. She quickly climbed up the stairs and as soon as she opened the door, her father called her, anxious.

"Vicky? Is that you?"

"Yes, I'm back." she announced, with a spontaneous smile. It was too much, she mustn't let her thoughts out. She pursed her lips and strive to keep a straight face. She took off her boots in the hall and she ran to her father's bedroom. She found him sitting, eagerly awaiting.

"Did everything go well? Did someone see you? Did they ask you questions?"

"Everything went well, dad, don't worry." she reassured him.

"And... He...?"

Viktoria nodded, a little doubtful about telling him the truth.

"I met him." she announced after an instant of hesitation. But her father didn't look worried at all.

"He's a good person. Ben..." he was starting to say, but suddenly they heard the door opening again.

"Hello everyone!" Eva's voice echoed from the hall.

Viktoria looked at her father interrogatively, hoping that he would got on with the sentence, but he suddenly shut up instead. Of course, Eva mustn't know. Nobody mustn't know. But she was good at keeping secrets, she was the best.

Ben Keller. Ben Keller. The more she repeated that name, the more an impatient feeling pervaded her. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to speak to him again. She wanted to know his whole story. That feeling of the risk, of the forbidden, of the mystery, gave her an adrenaline shock so exciting that she realised that until that day, she hadn't never felt so alive. Finally she had something to fight for, finally she was older enough to be able to take sides and fight for her ideals.

That night she fell asleep wrapped in a soft warmth, thinking that the next day she would have had in her hands again such an important mission.

She was her again. The Queen. But... Everything was so different than usual.

First of all, her clothes. She wasn't wearing any more that beautiful corsage, the gored skirt and all of the jewels which adorned her while she watched the soldiers through her window in her room. She was wearing a long white gown, anonymous and too thin: it was really cold there.

She felt a terrible anguish in her chest when she realised she couldn't see the baby anywhere. She painted, looking around. That place was horrible; a dark, black cell, which emanated cold and humidity from everywhere, and not even a bed on which lay down, just a straw still. Straw? She was the Queen, how was it possible that they treated her like that? Which horrible things had she done?

While combing her long hair down with her hands in a nervous movement, she got an unjustified fear of losing it. Why that feeling?

She felt as she was going crazy for a minute, but as soon as she was about to cry, she heard some steps getting closer and she pulled herself together right away. She knew she mustn't show her weakness, especially if behind that door would have appeared that fair-haired again.

She raised her head superbly – as if she could still afford to show off her confidence – and then the door opened. She saw a guard letting a woman in. A beautiful woman with long brown hair: she inspired confidence, but she made her feel an infinite sadness. She knew that was the last time she would have seen her.

When the guard closed the door, the woman rushed to her feet. Kneeling in front of her she cried sobbing and holding her hands, but she was unperturbed. She stroked her hair.

"You have to stay strong, Constance." she repeated with a trembling voice. "You have to stay strong."

She secretly shed a tear and waited for the woman to calm down.

"What will happen to my baby?" she asked in a weak voice.

Constance shook her head. "I don't know." she declared, desperate, with her face completely wet.

She let some moments to pass, during which she stared in the eyes the one who probably had been the dearest friend to her.

"And what will happen to him...?" she asked in the end.

But she didn't want to know the answer to that question.

Then she woke up.


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter 5_

In the morning, after a tormented rest, Viktoria woke up more doubtful than before. What happened to her recurring dream? Why had it changed all of a sudden? On the one hand she felt kind of relieved: maybe everything would have been clearer, even if at the moment it appeared to be more confused than before. That story involved her as she had been watching for years and years the same page of a book, not being able to know how it would have ended, but finally she managed to turn it.

But from the first hours in the morning, already, almost all of her thoughts addressed to Ben Keller. She would have met him again that day at the factory closure and she couldn't wait.

She walked around all day long like a grasshopper, impatient and unable to stand still; she kept asking her father if he needed something, and she even baked a chocolate cake.

Her grandmother loved it and when Viktoria brought her a piece of it, she was so grateful for the beautiful surprise that she couldn't stop laughing.

It came back to the girl's mind how her grandmother was years ago, when she was still a child; sure, she hadn't changed much, she was still the sweet old lady she remembered, but she missed their long talks. Since when the illness had prevented her, she seemed to not understand almost anything of what happened around her.  
She envied her a little, she would have wanted to not understand war and all the horrors as well, but sadly they were under her eyes every day.

"It's good, grandma, isn't it?" she asked, biting a little bit herself.

"I can confirm!" her father exclaimed from the next room. He was tasting a big piece of it as well: the doctor recommended him to eat, because he lost a lot of mineral salts in the first two days when he had the temperature.

Viktoria giggled, amused, and her grandmother did the same, nodding.

"Vicky" she said then, pointing with the fork the dresser next to the bed which she shared with Eva. "Look in the drawer."

She was surprised. Her grandmother rarely spoke on her own, and when she did it, she said nothing but few mumbled and confused words, often non-sensed. She quickly obeyed, in case that moment of lucidity passed as fast as he'd come.

In the drawer, along with a Bible, she found what looked like a necklace with a heavy pendant hanging from it. She looked at her grandmother in a questioning air and she, with a gesture, encouraged her to take what she'd found. She pulled it out carefully, and she brought it to her. It was a crucifix made of silver, it appeared, with five little amber stones mounted, hanging form a long chain.

"Where does it come from?" she asked, curious, examining it. "It seems quite old..." she noticed. It wasn't the sort of thing her grandmother would have worn, not even when she was younger: it was definitely too showy and the chain was too long.

"It's yours." said the old lady, innocently smiling.

"Mine?" Viktoria didn't understand what she meant. Was she giving it to her as a gift? Or maybe it had always been hers? But still, she didn't remember seeing it before then.

"I've kept it." added her grandmother. "For you, I've kept it."

Viktoria was moved by a wave of pity. Probably it was one of the many silliness she got into her head from time to time. Her hope of having a reasonable conversation faded away, when the old lady repeated many and many times the last sentence like a broken vinyl, until Viktoria reassured her.

"Thank you, grandma. It's beautiful. I'll always keep it with me during my prayers."

Even if the origin of that item wasn't clear and neither was his value, she didn't wonder about that any longer, even because she had something else to think about. The hour was approaching, and Viktoria was eagerly awaiting for it.

Her father wanted to address to her further advices, and along with them also another precaution. It was better if she'd carried the food hidden: with a great cunning, they managed to sew up a double bottom in an old purse, in which they were able to put some bread and cheese cut in slices and wrapped. The filled the real bottom of the leather purse with make-ups, a couple of napkins and her wallet. Viktoria secretly put into it also a piece of chocolate cake wrapped in a cloth. If they had asked her questions about it, she would have replied that even a woman has her own vices!

She went out and followed again the street as she did the day before, trying not to get noticed by anyone. This time she didn't stop talking with Mr. Leitner; in a minor road, she stopped pretending to adjust a boot, when she saw that the workers were coming out. She didn't want to lose too much time. She lowered her head and let her blonde hair gathered in two braids cover her face just enough to plant doubt in who was watching her and discourage them from getting close to talk. But from that posture she could count anyway the pairs of legs alternating impatient of going back home: she counted ten of them before raising up with a satisfactory air. She looked around many times, and she finally got into the building.

In no time she found herself opening the manhole in her father's office. This time she didn't need to grab any source of light, because the room was already feebly lighted: the oil lamp on the table allowed her to identify Ben's figure, who was already waiting for her, warned by her steps.

"Good afternoon." she said, feeling suddenly filled with embarrassment. She'd been so confident until then, but that man's sight had completely frozen her. He smiled to her and got up.

"I couldn't wait for you to come." Ben declared, handling to her the blue napkin that the day before was hiding the food in the basket: he'd folded it carefully in a perfect square.

Viktoria took it, a little confused, and she looked at it for a moment before she recognised it. Then she understood that the poor man must have been starving, so she went to the table to put the purse on it.

"I hope you're not suffering too much." as soon as she'd said that sentence, she wished to take it back. What a stupid thing to say, of course he was suffering. They crossed their eyes silently, but he smiled again. Viktoria played it cool and started empting the purse's content on the table, one piece at time.

But what she saw on the wooden surface, knocked her out. She stopped doing what she was doing and she grabbed a paper in her hands. She stayed for a while looking herself in what was a wonderful portrait of her profile. It was perfect, but she looked more royal than her nature, it looked almost like a cameo.

"Am I...?" she asked, not expecting an answer, though. "But how...? You saw me just for a few minutes... In the shadow..."

"I'm really good with faces." he replied, shrugging his shoulders to minimise it.

"So, you're an artist!" the girl assumed, opening her eyes wide. "Am I right?"

"Kind of..." he laughed. Viktoria searched with her eyes other works, but she was disappointed: every paper on the table were still white. She went back looking at her portrait.

"Do you like it?" he asked. She just nodded, smiling. "It's yours if you want." said Ben, sitting next to her, who, still on her feet, tried to watch the painting in different lights.

"Oh, I couldn't...!" she tried to say, even if she strongly wanted to keep it. But she wanted to be polite, anyway. "You put so much effort in it..."

"I did it for you. It's the only way I know to pay you back."

They looked in the eyes again for a second, both of them sincerely smiled. Then Viktoria winced.

"Oh, you must be hungry! I'm sorry." she went back empting the purse and she lifted the false bottom, taking out everything she'd prepared for him. But Ben didn't look interested in the food that she was putting in front of him: she felt his glance on her, and although this thing made her blush even more, she didn't mind at all.

"I've made a cake..." she started to say, handling to him the napkin in which the dessert was wrapped. "A chocolate cake." she added. He wouldn't stop smiling at her. Suddenly, he grabbed her hand and, as he did the day before, he kissed it.

"You're such an angel."

Viktoria didn't know how to react, she didn't now whether to react in some way or not. She just smiled uncertainly, playing with one of her braids, flattered.

"And the resemblance to your mother is disarming."


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6_

"Did you... Did you say...?" she asked, confused. She'd been astonished by that statement. How come Ben knew her mother? Maybe her father had just showed him some pictures... Maybe they were closer than she thought, but suddenly she realised why that painting was so similar to her. Probably it didn't remind her just her own face, but even a more familiar one. That explained even the not-lookalike expression.

"Miss Marlene was a wonderful person."

No one had said her mother's name since she died, and it was a harsh blow to Viktoria, so tough that unconsciously she'd put her hand on her chest, broken, as to check if her heart hadn't stopped beating all of a sudden.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." he rushed to justify. He stood up and walked her to the chair where he was sitting a second ago, trying to get her comfortable. Then he went sitting on the bed. He ran his hands through his hair, and he stayed silent for a while. Viktoria looked at him dazed. How many surprises was he holding for her? She saw him sighing, as if he was torn between telling her everything and keeping silent.

"How do you..." she started, but suddenly she appeared to have forgotten the rest of the sentence. Ben understood any way, and he replied.

"I don't want to shock you, Miss Haas, and neither upset Paul by telling you this story." he put his hands out, getting defensive.

"Don't call me miss, please. If it's true that you knew my mother, and as you call my father by name..."

He seemed to hesitate for a while, then he stated: "Well. But, please Mi-" he corrected himself. "Viktoria, do the same with me."

Viktoria lowered her eyes for a second on his Star of David sewed on his shirt. A constant reminder about the fact that she, Aryan, should have been superior to him. But the idea of calling him by name, though, looked as a lack of respect, as he was older than her, but she tried to get used to the idea to please him.

"Tell me. Please." she begged with her glance and a suppliant voice.

Ben – who seemed to had been avoiding for a while looking at her face – couldn't do anything but melting about that request, and he finally spoke.

"I had my own shop." he started to say, serious. "It was humble. Maybe you can still see what's left after they've destroyed it." he slightly smiled disconsolate. "Your mother bought from me a couple of paintings: she was a smart woman and she knew how to appreciate art like a few people can."

Viktoria looked down. She didn't know much about art: for a second she felt inferior to the mystifying picture Ben had of her mother.

"From that day she would often stop to talk. We talked about everything, from paintings to the music, to... Our families." he swallowed in the middle of the sentence, looking away from Viktoria. A doubt crept into her mind like a worm.

"Are you saying that...?" she ventured. It couldn't be. He was way younger than her mother, and she would have never betrayed her father. They were the happiest couple she'd ever met.

"Yes. I had a wife." he admitted, misunderstanding her concern. Viktoria felt stupid to thought something like that, and she almost breathed a sigh of relief, until she understood what that past phrase meant.

"I'm sorry." she mumbled, broken in seeing that a tear was hesitating in the corner of his right eye. "... I really am." she added.

"Thank you. Anyway, your mother never met her. And I never met her family, until that day..." he paused for a second, but it seemed a century to Viktoria, then he went back to say. "The German had just invaded, and I was dismantling my shop, before they could destroy even what was inside: I knew it was a matter of time, and I had already resigned to look for a hiding place. Your mother made everything to help me, she also tried to give me some money, but I turned it down." he sighed, as after all he regretted turning down those money.

Viktoria thought that probably he would have been able to escape far enough to save himself from the persecutions. But then she remembered that at the time nobody imagined that they would have gone that far.

"That day I heard a shot from the corner of the street, followed by many screams, and I ran to see what was happening. The situation didn't appear clear right away, but one thing was: your mother was putting herself in real danger. A little boy lied lay on the ground in a pool of blood. He would have been about nine years." his broken voice was making difficult to him to go on, but he swallowed again and continued. "Marlene lashed out at one of the soldiers, she was out of her mind. She was kicking and punching him, calling him a murderer, repeating that it was just a child, that he was just playing... That he didn't hit him on purpose with his sling... On the boy's body I saw one of these..." he touched his shoulder on which was sewed the yellow star and he shook his head.

Viktoria in an automatic gesture stood up and went sitting next to him. She embraced his shoulders in a cosy hug, helping him to reject his tears.

"I think you know how your mother was." he strived to smile at her. Viktoria did the same.

"Suddenly, I saw her grabbing the soldier's gun. Everyone was astonished, and the man raised his arms as a sign of surrender, but Marlene was furious. I saw fire in her eyes, and fear in the soldier's. I wished that she had shot him. But I wished more that she had survived. I ran to the alley at her back, hoping not to hear any other shot..."

Viktoria was listening holding her breath. Where did that story come from? From his imagination or from a book? She couldn't believe it really happened. To her mother!

"I grabbed her just before other soldiers came running, the gun fell from her hand. Nobody was hurt, but we had at least three Germans running after us. We ran, and ran, I dragged her by her hand as far as I could until I was sure they lost us, then we hid at my home. I waited for the night to walk her home. You and your sister were sleeping. Your father burst into tears." he smiled remembering, as it was a funny scene to see, but Viktoria thought that he must have been happy that the story had a happy ending.

"He thanked me hundreds of times. He told me he owed me his life. But I think... I just did what it had to be done." he closed, with such a humility that left Viktoria speechless.

Ben was a hero. How could he diminish his act? He saved her mother's life. She looked at him in a different way.

"It's..." she moaned, not sure of what to say in a moment like that. "I..."

Viktoria raised her head and realised that Ben was looking at her. On his face she read an intense concern and almost regretting not have done more for her mother, and she had the strong pulse of reassuring him. She got her face closer to his, slowly, and she kissed him on his cheek.

She saw him surprised by that gesture, and she was as well. But right after that, he went back being afflict and thoughtful.

Suddenly Viktoria jumped up, looking around. The light. Where did it go? She hadn't realised that the sun went down a while ago, leaving them in the shadow of the lamp on the table.

"Oh Lord... Oh no!" she babbled, without knowing where to go or what to do. She felt grabbed by a wrist in a gentle but confident grasp.

"What's happening? Calm down."

"It's dark!" the girl exclaimed with tears in her eyes. "How am I going to go home, now?" Viktoria was so nervous that the man was struggling to hold her down.

"Lower your voice..." he whispered, pushing her in doing the same. "Did anyone see you come in here?" he asked, trying to get back the problem on a practical level.

She thought about it for a while, then she shook her head. The soldier who usually lurked on the main road were smoking and talking when she passed by, and she was almost sure that they didn't dignify her with a look.

"I know you're not going to like it. And probably neither your dad will..." Ben anticipated. But his tone was still reassuring. "I think you should spend the night here."

At first, the girl had a nervous giggle. Was he serious? She looked at him for a second. He was serious. And she started considering seriously the idea.

She would have aroused suspicion walking alone in the dark. Moreover, the lights in the centre were switched off at night to make the air attacks more difficult. In one of her fantasies she could see herself accompanied at home from the Germans, her father horrified, and then the checks in the factory, the manhole being discovered...

But at the same time she couldn't do something like that without her father's permission, and he would have died from worry not seeing her come home.

Suddenly, both of them raised her looks towards the manhole: Viktoria almost screamed, scared.

A persistent and penetrating ringing that at first alarmed them, reassured them: it was the office's phone.


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7_

Why didn't she think about that before? They had a telephone at home, and there was a telephone in the office: her father even recommended her to use it for any eventualities, but she just didn't think about it at the moment.

She rapidly climbed the stairs, under Ben's thoughtful eye, who didn't dare move from his standing.

Viktoria reached the telephone and quickly picked it up, but a caution instinct told her to not answer right away. But when she heard her father's voice, she reassured.

"Vicky?"

"Dad! It's me!" she cried out relieved.

"God, Vicky, you scared me half to dead... Did something happen?" the girl rejected the tears: her father's voice was full of concern.

"No, I'm fine. I just wasted too much time before entering... I'm... A bunch of workers lit up cigarettes and wouldn't move from the door, I couldn't get in." she blatantly lied. She regretted right away, but she couldn't tell him the truth in that way, on the phone. She grabbed onto the telephone pushing it against her ear. She didn't want to miss not even a little sign in his father's reaction.

"Vicky, listen to me. You stay there. Tomorrow morning, as the sun comes up, come back home. If someone asks you questions, you tell him you were dealing with some accounting and you fell asleep. Now put on the table some papers with numbers and leave the account book opened."

The girl nodded, as he could see her.

"I'm sure that Ben will take care of you. Goodnight, my child."

"Goodnight, dad."

Viktoria slowly hanged up the phone. Then she obeyed, she did as her father told her to do and she went back down into the manhole, where she found Ben right as she left him before. She saw a spark into his eyes.

"I'm sorry to bother you this way." she murmured. "And you probably are hungry, feel free to eat even if I'm here." she invited, pointing with her hand to the food on the table. He shook his head, but then he found himself nodding.

"Actually, I'm starving. Forgive me. If you want to sleep, use my bed. I'll manage. There's also a bathroom there." he pointed at the door that she'd already noticed the day before.

Viktoria weakly smiled. All the complicity that was born between them earlier, had been making way for a great awkwardness about sharing the same room until the following day. She thought that the best thing to do would have been trying to sleep, in order to avoid starting another conversation. She put her boots at the foot of the bed and she snuggled under the sheets, without saying a word, turning her back to him. Actually, that place wasn't that bad. The pillow was full of Ben's perfume. At first, she heard him eating, sitting at the table, then he started scrabbling something, but at that point she fell asleep.

The cell was dark and oppressive. It seemed that the time was running awfully slow and she felt like she was losing her mind. She wanted to see her baby again, she wanted to know if he was safe. And then, there was another person she wanted to see again.

She jumped up when she heard someone getting close to the door. She couldn't see anything from in there, and this fact caused her a great anxiety. She was scared that the fair-haired came back, but there was someone else she much feared; at the same time, she wished that the woman named Constance came back to comfort her a little, but she knew that wasn't possible.

She saw a guard coming in, then two, and a third person stood at the door. But she wasn't scared. In fact, she smiled and she felt relieved.

"Your Majesty." said one of the three, the largest and the darkest.

"Would you follow us?" asked the other one, with bright eyes and a crypting smile.

The man at the door, the youngest, smiled her reassuringly. With no hesitation, she went to him, followed by the other two. She felt that she had anything to lose anyway.

Everything that happened after that was really hectic and she couldn't follow the pictures streaming through her mind, like a film's roll which is about to get burned.

They were running. There were shots. The tall dark man was screaming something, but one of the three had shot next to her ear and she couldn't hear anything but a penetrating whistle and muffled distant voices. She was just running as fast as she could, out of the prison, then on a chart and finally out of the town.

Hidden under a rug, she peeked outside and she saw that they were getting away from a place that had been her house for a long time, but which she couldn't name.

Everything was so fast and confused, but when the chart stopped and they got her off it, the three had changed their clothes and she identified them with the light-blue cloaks that she saw outside her bedroom's window. However, something was still missing.

She looked around, finding nothing but a forested area and a single path. But suddenly someone got into her sight and she finally felt relieved. A fourth man, in civilian clothes was smiling at her under his moustache, handling her a bundle.

Her baby's cry made her smile and weep with joy at the same time: she picked him up and she kissed his forehead.

The four men knelt, but she had eyes for no one but her son and the moustached man who, with a knee on the ground, was grabbing her hand in order to kiss it.

When his lips touched it, Viktoria woke up.

It wasn't a harsh awakening as usual, even if she slightly winced. Her heart skipped a beat: it was him.

That man in her dream was him, he was Ben.

For a while she remained confused by the place she was into, then she came to her senses, recognising the hiding under her father's office. Her eyes roamed in the darkness. She didn't feel that strange the fact she identified with Ben the person she'd waited all those years. She wondered that probably her subconscious had given him Ben's face because she was deeply attracted to him. She couldn't deny it: she wanted to kiss him on his lips the night before, but she'd known him such a short time that she thought it might have been a very insolent move.

So, that was how her dream/romance ended? She finally found happiness with her baby and her man, who she supposed to have been her lover.

On one hand she hoped she could go on dreaming that adventure that, actually, thrilled her like no other book she'd read. On the other hand, she was happy for the character who had got a happy ending.

She turned on the side and she tried to get asleep again. She couldn't see Ben in the room, but she heard him breathing and she supposed he got asleep on the table.

"Anne..." she heard him whispering.

She wasn't surprised at all: she could just imagine how many things he had been through. She suddenly remembered he told her he was married. This thing saddened her a little, both for the fact that he'd lost his wife, and because for a while she thought that his heart was free to be captured. But she felt silly, instead. He was probably still thinking about his wife, and he would have never noticed a child like her, who hadn't even finished her studies at the University.

"Je... Je t'amerai... à jamais... à jamais..." he mumbled, his voice increasingly blurring until it turned again into a deep breathe.

What language was that? Maybe Italian, or French... Viktoria didn't know he had such origins. Or maybe her wife was a foreigner.

She had always wanted to learn French, which was her grandfather's language, but sadly he died just after she was born and her grandmother had never learned it so fluently that she could have taught her. She was really curious to know what Ben was whispering, but she didn't want to wake him up, of course. At the same time she was feeling guilty about stealing his bed with no hesitation: maybe he was having nightmares because of the uncomfortable chair.

She got up, trying to not make noises and she brought the sheet with her. She realised she had rested enough, so she assumed many hours had passed. She'd better be ready for when the sun got up.

She groped following Ben's breathe, until she saw his white shirt standing out in the darkness: he'd really fallen asleep at the table, on some papers. She covered him with the sheet and she took the opportunity of kissing his head. She did it so gently that he didn't even move.

She went back sitting on the bed waiting patiently, while she did her braids again. The morning light wasn't late in illuminating the room and Viktoria could put on her boots; she was always really careful at not moving too quickly to not wake Ben up, but she couldn't wait too long. The roads would have started filling with people very soon.

He raised his head, as he'd read her mind: he had messy hair and the mark of his shirt's folds on his face. She would have find the scene really funny, if her attention wasn't captured by something else.

When she could clearly see the room, she realised that on the table on which he fell asleep, there were way more than a couple of drawings. They must have been ten, and there was even a big album next to him.

They all portrayed the same face, in different positions: hers.

She looked at the man, astonished, without getting the irony of his ridiculous sleepy appearance, looking for an explanation. That thing was starting to be a little creepy: the fact that he'd portrayed her once was really sweet, but now she felt almost overwhelmed.

"Goodmor-" he was about to say, before noticing Viktoria's look. He winced and he rushed to gather all the drawings in a pad, almost as he wanted to hide them to her sight.

"I just got carried away with it..." he justified confusingly, shaking his head.

"I think... I should go. My father will be worried about me." the girl grabbed her purse and quickly started climbing the stairs.

"Wait." he begged, still too numb to react rapidly. "Will I see you tonight?"

Viktoria hesitated on the last steps. Then she turned and smiled.

"Sure."


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter 8_

Her father hugged her for at least half an hour after she arrived home safe and sound, and even Eva did the same. She had the situation explained and she said that she had been worried all night long about her, so much so that Viktoria could read it in the dark circles around her eyes.

Viktoria reassured everyone saying that Mr. Keller treated her like homespun gold and he also gave up his bed to her. She obviously didn't mention the portrait that he gave her, nor the ones that he was hiding. What was in that album? She was curious to know if he drew something else apart from people. And what kind of paintings did her mother buy from him?

Without being seen, she walked around the house to find a signature in a corner of one of the paintings hanging on the walls or behind them, but nothing. She found no clue.

On the spur of the moment, she'd found Ben's obsession for her face a little creepy, but then, thinking about it, she told herself that it was his job. He was an artist, and he drew, and so? Moreover, she loved the way he drew her. The other paintings that she peeked were different from the one he gave her, the one in which she looked like herself just because of the face's traits; in the others she was able to reflect her image better, she should have looked at them closer.

That day she stayed almost all the time with her dad. However, she didn't dare to let him know that she knew Ben and her mother's story: it still seemed incredible to her. She just sat next to his bed, embroidering a handkerchief she wanted to gave her grandmother. Mr. Keller was healing already; they would have managed to keep him at home for another couple of days at most, but then they knew they wouldn't be able to keep him from going back to his beloved factory.

Viktoria started to prepare herself to go out quite some time before. But she devoted some of this time saying a little prayer for everything to turn out fine. She held in her hands that crucifix her grandmother gave her, and then in a movement that came natural, she put it around her neck, hiding it under her dress. She let her hair down on her shoulders for the necklace not to be seen.

She'd already got her purse with the fake bottom full of food, she just had to put her boots on and say goodbye to her father. She did it patiently listening to all his recommendations, keeping herself from smiling as she wanted to do. Then he kissed him on his forehead and she ran to the door.

"I did it."

Viktoria stopped in the middle of the aisle. She thought she'd heard a whispering voice.

"I was good."

Again. She was sure of it: it was coming from her grandmother's room. She got closer, trying not to make noise and she opened the door enough to hear better, but she couldn't see inside. Who she was talking to? There couldn't be anybody there.

"I've kept it for all this time... But I'm sure about that: it's her."

Viktoria was astonished and confused. Was she supposed to tell her dad that grandma started to talk to herself? For a while, she didn't hear anything else and she was about to go away, promising to talk about that with someone later, but then other words came to her ear.

"I miss you, Jerome."

It was just a rattle, but she was sure she heard her pronouncing her grandfather's name. She was about to cry; she knew that her grandmother was really sensitive about her dead husband, but she couldn't suppose...

She pressed a hand against her mouth and rejected a tear, promising herself to think about it while walking to the factory: it was late, she couldn't waste any more time.

She quickly ran downstairs and she started walking on the street.

While she walked thoughtful, she almost had the pulse to go back examining that crucifix. Was it the thing her grandmother was talking about? But what was so particular in it? She rubbed her neck, lost in thought and, a part from the cold chain that was holding the jewel under her dress, she felt something liquid wetting her fingers. She looked at them, and she noticed they were red in blood. Again, that mole must have been accidentally rubbed, maybe by the chain itself. Annoyed, she looked for a tissue in her purse and she wiped her neck under her hair.

"Miss."

An authoritarian voice with a strong German accent gave her the chills. She stopped in the middle of the road. In horror, she realised that it must have been later than she thought, because she couldn't see the women going home from work, and not even her father's factory workers. She took a slow, deep breathe, then she turned, showing her best smile.

"Yes?"

The guard standing in front of her must have had a few years more than Ben, he had a squared jaw and the typical Aryan traits: fair-haired, blue eyes.

"Could you show me your documents?" he asked, imperturbably.

Viktoria was screaming inside. Her legs wanted to do something different from what her brain was ordering: run. Run as fast as she can, at home, and lock the door and cry in her father's arms to feel safe again. But she couldn't do that, she had to stay strong and not lower her head, never.

"Sure." with no hesitation, she went through her leather purse, taking advantage to check that the fake bottom was in his place. She handled her ID to the German. He confronted the picture on the document with her face, raising and lowering his eyes a couple of times, then he spoke again. His voice was like an electric shock in Viktoria's back.

"Where are you going at such an hour, by yourself?"

"My father is recovering from illness, I had to take some documents from his office... From his factory, Haas&Phol's." she confidently pointed the building at the bottom of the road. He went back looking at the document, probably verifying that she really was the daughter of one of the two partners. Then he gave it back to her.

"The sun is about to go down. You'd better hurry." he sentenced, standing still to watch her with a persistent, staring look.

"You're kind to worry about me." she tweeted. After all, as far as she was naive, she knew how to work a man if she wanted to. "But I'll be done in a blink of an eye." she smiled, pretending she was grateful, even if she knew that in the soldier's words there was just suspicion. But there was no way she would have shown him she was afraid of him and his inquiring questions.

"Be careful. Have a good evening." and, as he came, he went away.

Viktoria didn't stop looking at him, she immediately turned and started walking fast, her eyes wide open, her breath short. She felt like she was the luckiest girl on Earth, and during the remaining moments she had to walk, she hold in her hand the crucifix, along with the dress that was hiding it.

After she'd taken the usual precautions, assuring that nobody had followed her and that nobody was watching, she throw herself in the manhole.

"Ben!" she sighed, looking for the man who – as he heard her calling – rushed to reach her, worried.

Viktoria looked into his eyes, on the brink of crying, then she throw herself to his neck, hugging him. After a second of hesitation, she felt him return her hug, shyly embracing her waist.

"I got scared." she whispered to his ear. However, she didn't cry. She strived to show strength, even though her words were saying the opposite. That hug was so comfortable that she wanted it never ended. She closed her eyes and for a while she melted, forgetting about everything; there was no war, no soldier, no humid, dirty basement, no weird dreams... Just that man that she wished she'd known in different circumstances.

He kindly pushed her away to look into her eyes. Viktoria returned his glance and it seemed almost as her look was begging him for a further contact like the hug he'd just given her or even more...

Ben slowly got closer to her face, he wouldn't stop looking at her. Her heart jumped up in her throat and she felt a brand new sensation she'd never had before. It was a mixture of adrenaline and excitement, of sweetness and comfort, of something familiar and something unknown. But there was something wrong: he'd been standing in that unusual posture for too long. Did she had given clues that she wouldn't have liked what was about to happen?

"Forgive me." he mumbled, shaking his head and getting away in a quite rude way. He ran his hand through his thick hair, turning his back to her. Viktoria was standing petrified, but the heat of the situation had overwhelmed her.

"It's... It's not your fault." he babbled, still shaken. Her face had turned red.

"Damn..." he hissed. She saw him trembling, but she couldn't say if it was for anger or anxiety.

"Ben..." she called him back, daring to move few steps in his direction and putting her hand on his shoulder. "If... If one day you'd like to talk to me about Anne, I'll understand... I'll... I'll listen to you, and if you want me to say something... Or just to shut..."

While she kept talking, she saw him slowly turning to her, thoughtful.

"...I'm sorry." she kept mumbling, feeling immensely stupid. "I'm sorry, I..."

"Who's Anne?" he suddenly asked, shaking his head confused. Viktoria looked at him as he was completely out of his mind. Actually, she had assumed something that he'd never told her, just listening to what he said while sleeping.

"I'm sorry. I thought she was... Your wife." she squeaked like a mouse, increasingly lowering her voice, scared of his reaction. But he kept staring with a questioning air.

"My wife's name was Elodie."


	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter 9_

Viktoria was even more confused than before.

"But I... I heard you talking in your sleep, and..." she realised that it actually sounded ridiculous when she said that out loud. "I don't know, you spoke in another language I didn't understand, and then you said that name, and I thought..."

"Woah." he stopped her, putting his hands out. "Wait, wait. Did you just say 'another language'? Have I got it right?" he looked at her like she'd gone crazy, but she firmly nodded.

"I think it was French, or Italian." she sentenced, certain about what she was saying. He smiled, amused.

"I don't speak any of these languages. I probably was just mumbling something nonsense..." he tried to minimise. "You should go now: the sun is going down, Cinderella." his smile became warmer.

"But...!" she tried to reply, but she resigned right away. They couldn't discuss about that any longer. She sighed and let go herself in a smile, letting all the doubts roll off her back. After all, that matter didn't concern her.

She emptied out the purse's fake bottom. Ben got close to her when she was putting back her stuff inside the purse, and he stuck a folded sheet inside it. Viktoria raised her look and she crossed the glance of the man, who smiled at her again, reassuring.

"Maybe this will clear your mind a little. Even if it doesn't explain how I become a polyglot at night." he friendly mocked her.

She returned a doubtful and quick smile, then she ran upstairs.

She was still shaken by everything had happened in less than an hour: her grandmother speaking to who knows who, the German soldier, that letter... the... almost-kiss that she and Ben shared...

That was the most intense experience of all her life, she'd never felt something like that. When she was at school, a guy had a crush on her and sometimes they exchanged some effusions, but they had nothing to do with what had just happened with Ben. She just expected that at any moment the energy between them could have exploded in the room, tearing the walls up. She tried to think about that as little as possible, when she went back with her mind at that moment she blushed from the bottom to the top, and she didn't want to draw again the German's attentions on her.

She couldn't understand, however, why he backed out in that way. Actually, he had all the reasons to do that, but there were too many to choose from: the age difference, the fear of her father's reaction, the memory of his wife. Or maybe he was just worried about the danger of the situation and the diversity of their races. He'd have been a fool if he hesitated for that reason, Viktoria couldn't spot any difference between the two ethnicity, and when speaking about "races", it seemed to her like speaking about animals: she hated that word.

As soon as she got home, she leaned against the door for a while, catching her breath. As usual, her father called her, anxious, and she reassured him. She didn't tell him about the soldier who stopped her, she didn't want him to worry and get out of bed before the term the doctor imposed to him.

She just locked her bedroom's door saying she wanted to rest a little before dinner, and she avidly opened the folded sheet that Ben gave her.

She devoured that letter with her eyes. She read and read again those words almost without blinking her eyes, with her mouth open.

 _"Dear Viktoria,_

 _I can't help writing this letter, because what I want to tell you can't be told in the few minutes of conversation we have every day, maybe not for long._

 _Dear Viktoria, what I want to tell you is not easy to understand, or I expect you to do that, but you're the only person I can freely speak to, and I don't want you to think of me as a maniac; I've seen the look in your face this morning, and I wanted to tell you many things, but I wasn't able to, I couldn't..._

 _I didn't tell you all the truth about your mother. I couldn't, I couldn't stand you to judge me negatively or see me as a liar, because this story is incredible. I can hardly believe it myself, but it is the simple truth._

 _When your mother came in my shop the first time, I was really interested in her, but not just because she was smart, pleasant and into arts. She reminded me a person I knew, in some way. She impressively looked like a woman I've been seeing in my dreams since I was a child._

 _Believe me, I do not intend to impress you or to tell you a romantic story about how I fell in love with your mother, because this never happened. I was happy with my wife, and the thing between me and Marlene was just a wonderful friendship. The most impressive thing happened years later._

 _One day I saw your mother walking with her daughters. One of them was identical to the woman I've been dreaming for as long as I can remember: it was you. Suddenly, I understood why your mother wanted to buy my paintings and why she was so impressed by them. The girl in the portraits was identical to one of her daughters._

 _But there's more: in my dream you're not dressed as usual, and you don't act like always. I wouldn't even say that's you, except for the fact that the woman has your face. In my dream I kneel at your feet and I kiss your hand. In my dream, you are a Queen."_

Viktoria felt about to pass out. She had to sit on the bed, with the letter still in her hand for miracle, as she was visibly trembling and her head was spinning.

How did that man... That man at whom she had never talked about her reams, how did he know...? It couldn't be true. She couldn't believe it. But why did he wanted to mock her about something like that? A light bulb went on.

If she'd found those paintings, she could have solved the mystery, see if they really looked like her. But she had no clues on where to look and asking to her father would have been too suspicious. Why did her mother buy them if she didn't hang them on the walls?

Suddenly, Eva came into her room. Viktoria winced, sharply interrupting her thought so quickly that she didn't even have time to hide the letter anywhere.

"Hey, Vicky..." her sister was about to say, stopping on the threshold, doubtful. "What do you have there?"

She hesitated a lot. That was her secret. Plus, her sister was completely sceptical about that topic, and she hadn't even told her how absurd her dreams had become lately.

"Close the door." she whispered. Eva obeyed, and got close, but she carefully re-folded the letter properly, so that not a word could be read.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"You? And that Jew?!" Eva cried out astonished, but her sister shushed her.

"Shut up, you goose! Do you want everyone to know that?" she hissed. Then she nodded, doubtfully. "Don't call him that. He's a very kind person." she shyly defended him.

"Well, but he is what he is."

"I don't like making differences. He's a man to me, and he's... adorable." she violently blushed and lowered her eyes. She wasn't used to make confessions like that to her sister, but she had to talk to someone about everything was happening to her, and that was the secret that tormented her most: the others were just doubts and conjectures. Eva was staring at her in a suspicious way and she read on her face a little jealousy: the fact that at her age she was still single, got her so much, but after all, she didn't have many chances of meeting peers, moreover unmarried ones.

"And... The other night, you two didn't... Did you?" she dared, mischievously.

"Wha-? No! For the love of God, Eva!" she pretended to be outraged. "I've known him just for few days."

The silence fell for some moments, during which the elder sister stared at the younger as she wasn't so convinced of her statement. In fact, there it went Viktoria, giving up under Eva's pushy stare, and she confessed: "All right. There was... something."

She saw her eyes opening wide and she was about to smirk as if to say: "I knew it!"

"It was nothing, it... he... Wanted to kiss me, but then he stopped." she sighed mortified. It was a relief to say it out loud, even if her sister wasn't exactly the right person to give her advices.

"And what about the letter?" Eva suddenly asked, pointing at the sheet that her sister was still holding.

"Oh, this..." she had to come up with something, quickly. "It's nothing. He talks about painting and he quotes some book I don't know." she'd hit the right spot. Her sister hated reading, she would have brushed aside that fact, when she'd realised that she couldn't be of any help and, on the contrary, it would have been boring reading that letter.

But Viktoria knew what she had to do, and she had established a specific role for Eva in the whole business.

"You must help me."


	10. Chapter 10

_Chapter 10_

She never expected that everything would have ran smoothly. Well, it was still too soon to speak, but at least the most difficult and dangerous part of her plan had been accomplished: she was in the factory, in the inside, safe.

She'd imagined every possible scenario, from her sister refusing to help her, to the worst one: being discovered by a soldier. But Eva didn't put up any resistance, on the contrary, she'd swear to have noticed a flash of excitement in her eyes when she asked her to cover her escape. Maybe she'd finally realised how it feels to live an adventure, a true one, like the ones she'd been avoiding for her whole life. Even if she wasn't living it as a first-hand experience, she was part of it anyway, and before Viktoria went out, she grabbed her hands and smiled at her, apologizing for what she said before about Ben, without even knowing him, and wishing her a happy ending for her story.

She didn't tell her about her dream. She didn't want to bring it up in the whole situation, knowing how much Eva was sceptical every time she would mention it, but that was the actual reason why she couldn't wait until the following night to tell him: it really was too important to keep it in for that long. Besides, her father was recovering fast, and soon he would have dismissed her from her duty and he would have come back to bring Ben the food himself.

Viktoria knew that it would have been safer in that way: she was standing out too much, while her father was right on his workplace, there wasn't anything suspicious in his movements. But just the thought of not be able to see him for who knows how long, broke her heart. That's the reason why she had to take advantage of it and tell him everything, immediately.

She didn't cross anyone on her way, she took some minor roads and the darkness swallowed her. She felt an oppressive, claustrophobic feeling, although she was in the open, in a place she knew very well; but once her eyes got used, she was helped by the moonlight which was feebly illuminating her path.

She'd still got her heart in her throat, when she entered the factory; after she closed the door behind her, she had to stop for a while to catch breath, but she wasn't able to do it.

She couldn't waste not even a second of the time she had with Ben: with the excitement still running in her veins, she ran into her father's office.

She didn't even care about bringing a lamp when she went downstairs. Her movements were so quick and impatient that she almost stumbled on the steps.

"Viktoria..." she heard murmuring in the darkness. The man seemed more worried than surprised.

"I... I can't see..." she felt silly in babbling, but it was the only thing that passed through her mind when she felt as if someone had injected in her veins a powerful tranquilliser. It was the adrenaline suddenly abandoning her body, leaving her with no energy. It was when she got almost at the end of the stairs that the loss of strength made drop also her attention and stumble, but Ben was faster. He embraced her waist with his arm, letting her fall on him, then he put the other arm under her knees and took the girl's weight on himself.

"S-Sorry..." she babbled, trying to see his face in the darkness.

In the very moment she heard Ben's voice she'd been feeling like home. That was the reason why all the fear and the adrenaline had dropped drastically in that moment: after all they weren't from the anxiety of speaking with him, but just from wanting to be with him.

She didn't have time to wonder why he wasn't moving, or he didn't put her down. Actually, she didn't even have time to open her mouth again, because she found herself silenced by his lips.

He did it with no hesitation, confident but not cold at all. In fact, a violent warmth spread in Viktoria's body even before she realised what was happening.

And then, once she'd understood, it was as if that feeling was already in her mind and she was living it again. The movements came natural to her, spontaneous, too grown-up like, for who she was. She brought her arms caressing his nape, she returned that kiss almost taking control of it, while he was going on carefully.

Suddenly, Viktoria snapped, moving away from him and wincing. She could see his face, now that they were so close, and she read concern on it.

"You have to see something." she said, in a cracked voice.

Without asking any questions, he put her down and lit a lamp. When she looked at her, she saw her raising her hand: the index was painted in red. Instinctively, Ben rubbed his nape.

"Don't worry, it's just a..." he minimised, finding a little weird the fact that Viktoria interrupted a moment like that just for a drop of blood. But when he brought back his attention on her, he saw her moving her hair from her nape and turning her back to him.

She had a little dot, in the same identical position of his. And the most surprising thing was that her too was bleeding.

"... mole." he closed his sentence, astonished.

He got closer to her. She was still with her back turned, and when he managed to see her face, he realised she was moved. Something was burning in her chest. It was a feeling she recalled, but she couldn't remember when she lived it, or understand if it was a good or a bad feeling. She just knew that it was right for them to be there together. That kiss had unlocked something: she knew everything would've never be the same.

Ben tried to comfort her, stroking her head and holding her, but they absolutely had to talk. He was probably thinking it was just a coincidence, but Viktoria knew it wasn't like that: there were too many things, they couldn't just be random.

"Nothing happened." he reassured her, while he kept passing his hand through her hair.

Viktoria couldn't find the words. "It's not true that nothing happened!" she would had screamed, but that feeling didn't abandon her yet and she just wanted to enjoy those cuddles, to breathe his perfume, to snuggle in his deep voice. She'd deserved it, after all.

"Anne." he said, unexpectedly.

She winced, surprised, moving away again to look at his face, but without losing contact with his arms that were holding her. Ben was smiling.

"Anne." he repeated. "It's the name I say in my sleep." he confessed. "My wife thought I had a lover named Anne." he chuckled amused. But Viktoria wasn't exactly amused: she was staring at him open-mouthed and wild-eyed.

"Why don't..." she was about to ask.

"Because I didn't know how to explain that to you." he replied, without even listening to her whole question. "I should have told you everything I wrote in the letter and I didn't know how. Included the fact I speak French in my sleep... Which is maybe the most absurd thing among all."

After a moment of loss and disbelief, Viktoria too saw the funny part of the matter.

She started giggling. Then she laughed, trying to contain herself, pressing her hand on her mouth.

"I don't even know what I'm saying, I don't know anyone who speaks French to translate!" he reinforced the joke, making her laughing louder.

Despite the amusement of the moment, Ben tried to silence her, with a hiss before and with another kiss then, which the girl savour fully.

"They're not coincidence." she whispered.

Now she could talk lightly, the tension had been muffled.

"The mole, your dreams... My dreams."

"Your dreams?" he repeated. Viktoria nodded.

"Since when I was a child... I've been dreaming of being in a sumptuous palace's room, with a dress from another time, from another place." she left behind on purpose the fact that she was holding a baby in her arms, replacing that part with a short silence. "Always the same dreams, for years and years, since when I recall. And then, when I met you... I dreamt of a man who came to take me away. I was dragged in a prison. Then some men came to free me, and..."

She went back looking into his eyes and it appeared like he was devouring that story and that he couldn't wait to listen what she would have said next.

"And I met you." she ended. "Ben, I..."

"You were a Queen." he stated, in a disenchanted air. "You were a Queen in your dream, weren't you?"

Viktoria nodded again slightly. Ben grabbed her hand and kissed it. He pressed his lips sharply against the back of her hand for a few seconds.

He seemed satisfied to her. It looked like he finally had found an answer to his questions and apparently he had clearer ideas than her, who kept wondering if her dreams would have continued and how, what her grandmother knew about that and above all what meant those signs that the fate was showing on her way.

Maybe God had something to do with that? She wondered if she could have found answers right in faith, and why she didn't think about that before.

When Ben spoke again, however, gave her another thing to consider. Something that would've made her forget for a while that supernatural story.

"Now I get why I've loved you since the first moment I met you. You were already part of me."


	11. Chapter 11

_Chapter 11_

For a few seconds, she wondered if she got it right and she repeated that sentence in her mind many times before realising that he really said that. He told he loved her. Him. Ben. That fascinating man, whose exact age she didn't even know, who'd already been married... He said he loved an inexpert and confused kid like her.

She couldn't believe that everything happening to her was so perfect and so idyllic, to the point of making her forget that the world was in war and that their lives were constantly in danger. She smiled to that man who didn't even seem to expect an answer from her, but who looked at her with dreaming eyes, proud of what he'd just said.

Then something ripped off the smile from both of their faces. Ben widened his eyes, grabbed her hand and rushed to turn off the lamp; but first he shushed her by pressing his lips against his lips.

So, she hadn't just made it up: she'd actually heard some steps crunching in the gravel. There was someone in the building's yard.

Viktoria stared the window with tears and terror in her eyes, then she went back looking at Ben. He was looking up too, terrorized. But after all, he turned to her and he held her.

The step noise was going on, but it didn't sounded like a soldier's walk. It sounded like a cripple trudging with uneven pace and, listening better, they could even hear him groaning. Gargly noises which made them both suppose that it was a wounded man. Suddenly, Viktoria looked at Ben with a completely different gaze.

He could have been a Jew, someone who had been running away, maybe he needed help, maybe...

Ben didn't leave her time to think further; he started shaking his head firmly, once he understood what she was thinking about. But in her veins ran her mother's blood and if there was someone she could do something for, she wouldn't stayed there waiting around. She felt his grip pressing on her arms, but as he worried of hurting her, he let her go and he couldn't do anything but stay and look at Viktoria climbing on the unsteady table.

She raised on tiptoes and she peeked from the dirty glass through which she couldn't see almost anything. But the sound of the steps had stopped: now just a suffering moaning could be heard in a little distance from the point where the little window faced on the yard. There he was: in the corner, she could barely see a man leaning on the wall, but it was too dark to understand if he was a Jew.

She felt a touch on her leg and in the moment she turned, she saw Ben shaking his head again, reaching out his hand to call her for coming down. The table rocked dangerously, when a scream echoed in their ears, making their blood run. "This way!" someone shouted in a strong German accent.

It was only in that moment that Viktoria realised the actual danger they were in. She came down from the table, almost throwing herself in Ben's arms, who caught her in his arms.

None of them wanted to look up any more, to the window. Both of them were trying to find comfort in each other, but in their eyes they could only read a fear they'd never experienced before: now they were taking the risk of losing more then their lives.

They heard more people running in the yard. They were yelling, everyone was yelling, and a man was crying. Viktoria didn't know what to do but pull out the crucifix she was wearing and hold it in her hands, with her heart in her throat and the tears burning her eyes. Ben didn't dare to move a muscle, he was barely blinking.

It almost seemed like he was looking at her for the last time in his life.

The screaming raised, it seemed like they were getting closer and closer to them but then a moment of silence was torn by a sudden shoot. Viktoria slightly winced, but Ben pressed his hand against her mouth. He felt it wetting in tears, but he moved it as soon as he realised that, although she was clearly shocked, she wouldn't never done something to draw the German's attention.

After they heard the soldiers dragging the body outside the yard, they didn't dare talking for long minutes. They just stayed staring each other in the eyes: Viktoria with the crucifix twisted in her hands, joined in a silent prayer; Ben who seemed to have just got slapped dozens of times.

He finally convinced himself to be safe and he lowered his eyes on the girl's hands. He could imagine what she was hiding in there, but he wanted to see it with his own eyes, like he was drew by an instinct he couldn't suppress. He kindly stroke her hand and she showed him the silver jewel.

At first, he was almost uninterested, but as he touched it, he immediately had to let it go to put his hands on his head.

"Ben!" Viktoria exclaimed, keeping her tone low. "Are you okay?"

"It's just... A headache..." he murmured, rubbing his temple.

"Lay down." she suggested, walking him to the bed. She enlightened the lamp again, keeping the light low and putting it on the ground as a further precaution, illuminating just the bottom area of the room.

Everything that had just happened, let her with her head full of worries. The chances that her father found out her night escape had exponentially raised. Even if there wasn't a body to move, someone would have told him about the fact: she just hoped that it would have happened the day after, when she would have been home. But most of all, she felt that man's life on her shoulders, even if she couldn't have done anything for helping him. But the man she could help was right there, next to her.

Although Ben had that angelic creature sitting next to him, lovingly caressing his forehead, he couldn't help but keeping look at the cross dangling in front of his face. That item inexplicably attracted him. He even started to wish that Viktoria gave it to him, because he desperately wanted to wear it. Yet, it wasn't a symbol of his faith, and he didn't even like the style... He touched it again. This time he managed to handle it for a few seconds, before another headache drew him away from his purpose to gaze at that item.

He hissed, forced to close his eyes because of the pain.

"Don't worry." Viktoria reassured him, keeping control of the situation. "You're probably a little stressed. A lot of things happened." she'd almost forgotten why she went down there in first place. But she surely hadn't forgotten what he confessed her before.

"Ben, I..." she was about to say. After all, she owed him an answer.

"Where... Where did you find that crucifix?" he asked him, tormented. Viktoria straightened her back, grabbing the jewel and looking at it.

"This? My grandmother gave it to me." she replied, confused. In a moment like that, why did he care so much about an item he'd never seen before?

He shook his head.

"I think it comes from somewhere far away." he stated confidently.

"Well, I don't know where it comes from exactly, but..."

"Will you do me a favour?" he asked, interrupting her again. Viktoria bit her tongue to stop the river of words she would have poured on him about her doubts regarding the crucifix. She nodded.

"Take it off and lay with me." he smiled at her mischievously, holding her hand.

The girl suddenly turned red. She didn't think that man could be so cheeky and above all she'd never seen that face, but strangely that thing didn't bother her. It was quite the opposite: she felt an excitement she'd never felt before. Was something about to happen? After all, she couldn't find anything wrong in that situation.

She took off the crucifix slowly, putting it on the table, then she snuggled beside him. She tried to keep the distances, she didn't want him to think that she used to do those things with men. She stayed on the edge of the bed, but the scene appeared a little ridiculous, and even Ben noticed that. He giggled and embraced her waist, dragging her to him.

He got close to kiss her, but he didn't do it. He was there, at the point of putting his lips against hers, but he just looked at her with narrowed eyes, a few centimetres from her face and that got Viktoria desiring that kiss like water in the desert, so much that she thought she would have gone crazy in waiting. She wondered if he was making her suffer on purpose, if it was just a game to him, an experiment to see how much she would have lasted... And the answer, in any case, would have been: very little time.

After some endless seconds, it was her to kiss him, finally tasting that feeling she'd desired so much. She would've never thought that wanting it so much, she would've enjoyed it more. He hugged her and with agile move, made her roll underneath him.

From her lips he went to her ear, he nibbled her earlobe, making her moaning in pleasure, then he went down on her neck. To making it easier, he unbuttoned the top buttons of the blouse in a second, so fast that Viktoria didn't even realise he was trying to do that until she felt his beard rubbing her chest. Her wheezing turned into a thrill when she realised what was about to happen.

"Ben!" she murmured, gently pushing him back.

He looked at her. He was lost, and she looked him back with the same confused gaze. It wasn't him any more. His look, his attitude, those confident movements... She couldn't recognise the man she thought he was. She'd imagined him as a passionate romantic, but she wouldn't believe he was so daring and resolute.

Then she saw him come to his senses. He shook his head, appalled, he ran a hand through his hair.

"I'm sorry, I... I don't know what..." he babbled, falling back on the bed and staring at the ceiling.

Viktoria smiled. She shouldn't have done that, but an instinct take the advantage, and she found herself feeling an incredible attraction to that lost man who had just made her feel things she wouldn't be able to describe. And she wouldn't have never described to anyone, after all.

It was a secret between them, one of many. It was a thing that would've stayed in that basement. For once, she could've been another persone.

"I didn't tell you to stop." she whispered. He suddenly turned, surprised.

"But..." he tried to reply.

"I've stopped you just to say that I love you too."


	12. Chapter 12

_Chapter 12_

Anne didn't even remember she was a Queen. As for her, she was born to do that: being a good mother and a good wife.

What she was sure to not be, though, was a good cook.

She was standing in a little kitchen, full of pans and pots and she didn't have idea of what she was cooking, but a pretty nauseating smell stung her nose and made her wanting to throw everything away. She was tired, sweated, messy and frustrated. Plus, the baby had started to cry and it wasn't no use to reassuring him by saying that his father would've come home soon. Actually, this thing didn't reassure her either, because dinner wasn't ready at all and she didn't want to disappoint him in any way. She went back reading the big kitchen book next to her, but she found herself more confused than before, among words she hadn't never heard before and process too hard to follow. The anger went up to her mind and she threw on the floor the heavy book, which fell with a thud. Not happy, she kicked it angrily, but she didn't got anything but moving it few centimetres and a hurting toe.

She smothered a scream, trying to maintain a little control, even if she had her privacy by then and wasn't surrounded any more by dozens of lady-in-waiting following every move she made. She grabbed her foot and jumped to the nearest chair, taking off her shoes. One thing she regretted were her beautiful dresses... She was wearing a simple robe – now filthy and greasy, but usually – and a pair of battered but comfortable sandals.

Tears filled her eyes for the pain, and she was about to go kicking also that stupid cauldron full of an indistinguishable swill, but she held herself. She sighed looking at it and shook her head. The baby was still crying and every scream made her wanting to cry.

"What's wrong, Philippe?" she wheezed, going and picking him up. In that moment she heard the door opening and she instinctively turned to the entrance.

She felt a wave of extreme affection for the man who had just walked through the door and who was lovingly smiling at her. She saw him looking around and laying his eyes on her bare foot, on the cauldron – from which a brown foam was now coming out – and on the book on the floor.

"So, what we're having tonight?" he asked anyway.

Anne felt overwhelmed by inadequacy, mixed with the deep love she felt for her Musketeer, even if he wasn't wearing the uniform any more. When he got closer she could smell the gunpowder and through her mind ran the picture of Aramis assembling and charging a musket, showing it to a couple of interested men.

"I'm sorry... I... Philippe..." she babbled exasperated, but he was unperturbed.

He kept smiling reassuring, then he took the baby from her arms. The baby seemed to calm down immediately. She couldn't do anything but thinking how wonderful was the man she loved. With her sleeve she wiped from her face a tear, from soot and she didn't know what else, and she kept looking; Aramis had the look and the attitude of a father. And – she realised that when he turned to her – of a loyal and devote husband.

He made her smile just with a little movement, then he grabbed her hand.

"Are you happy, Anne?" he asked suddenly. She was moved again, and she nodded.

"How could I not?" she replied in a low voice.

Aramis pressed his lips on her hand; he kept staring at her adoringly.

* * *

Viktoria opened her eyes and she realised she was smiling.

So, that was how it ended... Both of them had found a new life, happy, satisfied and in love. Would it have ended that way between her and Ben?

Oh, dear God! Ben! Suddenly everything came back to her mind and her smile widened even more. She felt him next to her, he was emanating a pleasing warmth and his deep breath inspired her with tenderness. It happened for real, so...

She rolled on a side and stared at him while he was sleeping, resisting the temptation of caressing and kissing his face that now appeared so innocent, but that few hours earlier... Well, it was everything but candid. But she liked that shade of him that had been keeping hidden until then. He had something resolute that made her feeling safe. For a second, she wondered if he acted that way with his wife too, but then she repulsed the thought. It was just about the two of them.

She deeply sighed, trying to relive on her skin those feelings that anybody else ever made her experience, without be ashamed at all of what happened in that bed.

She waited a little longer for him to wake up, but he must have been really exhausted, because he didn't open his eyes even when she got up from bed without trying to do it silently. On one hand she wanted him to wake up to tell about her dream, but on the other hand she didn't want to do it directly to not seem too impatient. The sun hadn't rose yet, but the lamp was still burning: none of them have had the strength to do the simple movement of turning it off, they just collapsed from exhaustion.

Viktoria got dressed, turning her back to him and imagining that he'd opened his eyes, admiring her, but when she turned again, she found him in the same pose as before. A little disappointed, she started looking around. She found the crucifix on the table and she wore it around her neck. But where was the album where he drew her gone? For a few days, she had been wanting to take a closer look to it and see if maybe he drew also her mother.

The table had a drawer. She hesitate a little before doing it, wondering wether it was right or not, but then she shook her shoulders. After all she wasn't doing anything wrong, she just wanted to see his drawings, she wouldn't have poked around.

But as soon as she started opening the drawer, she heard Ben moving in the bed. He was stretching, but his eyes were still closed; Viktoria closed the drawer and smiled to him.

"Ben!" she exclaimed like a child who sees a dear person after a long time. She jumped into the bed, overwhelming him with her impulse and, without leaving him time to connect, she kissed him. He winced at first, but then he hugged her, returning the kiss while sitting up. Viktoria realised something was different. He wasn't that man any more, that expert and flirty man who seduced her with a glance a few hours earlier. He was... Ben again. And this thing drew her crazy, because she couldn't understand how two different behaviours attracted her in the same way.

She looked into his eyes, peacefully, and suddenly she remembered.

"Oh, I made a dream again!" she exclaimed thrilled, and she started telling it in detail all at once. He listened, half-asleep and half-astonished, until Viktoria stopped talking. In that moment he spoke, simply commenting: "A baby?!" while widened his eyes.

Oh yes. She deliberately skipped that part when she told him about the previous dreams, but now it had slipped out. And as she couldn't understand if Ben was upset or glad, she just nodded, closing her lips. But when she saw him laughing, she let herself go too.

"A baby... We were happy... And we had a baby." he sighed, running his hand through his hair. Viktoria kept smiling, but she became thoughtful.

"What does that mean?"

He stared at her for a while, as if he was uncertain of speaking, but in the end Viktoria's insistent glances convinced him. He grabbed her hand and he kissed it in their usual ritual.

"I know it's hard to understand. But it's the only explanation that clarifies what is happening to us... And I think you should accept it too, even if our faiths don't consider it."

The girl moved her hair behind her ear and her smile turned into a face concentrated in focusing every single word Ben was saying.

What was he trying to say? Did all of that make a sense? Wasn't it just a figment of her imagination and... Well, coincidences?

It was true, there was something really strange in the fact that he knew her face before meeting her, and that mole that they both had... She'd explained it just as a sign of fate, or a sign from heaven. She thought it was God trying to made them understand that they were meant to be together, no matter their ages or their faiths... But while she was thinking about these things, Viktoria realised herself how ridiculous it sounded, once she got all the jigsaw's pieces together. She was just trying to explain something inexplicable and arcane, justifying it as a miracle. But she stopped believing in miracles the day her mother died.

"What do you mean?" she asked, determined to open her mind to any absurd explanation Ben would have given her. After all, she deeply trusted him.

"I think these are memories from a past life."


	13. Chapter 13

_Chapter 13_

Absurd. Everything was completely absurd. That chance had never crossed her mind, but at times it didn't appear so unlikely. But then she shook her head and repulsed the idea like a temptation she had to resist to.

By admitting something like that meant betray her God, her faith, everything she believed. But not admitting it meant siding on Ben's opposite side, against an idea he was so proud of. She wanted to see more clearly.

While she was walking on the city centre's streets, with her usual confident pace and not looking anyone in the eyes, she promised herself to stop by the library to look for something about that issue. Books couldn't betray her, books told tales or truths and she was able to distinguish one kind from the other.

It was just when she was already too close that she realised that a person was walking alongside her. She winced when she saw with the corner of her eye the soldier's uniform, and stopping she realised that it was the same soldier who stopped her few days before.

"Good morning." he said unflappable, his voice firm and authoritative.

"G-Good morning." Viktoria replied, caught off guard. She had to pull herself together as fast as she could.

"May I ask you to show your documents?" the man asked, staring at her from the bottom to the top. She must had her hair still messy, because she hadn't had time to comb them, and she realised that her clothes were slightly wrinkled too. Her lucky was that men usually don't notice those things when they look at a beautiful girl. Well, almost every man. As Viktoria was taking out the documents, she felt the staring look of the soldier on herself. She wanted to ask him if he was messing with her, as he asked her documents just few days earlier and she was sure he hadn't forgotten that neither. In fact he just gave a quick look at her ID, and he went back to question her.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going back home. I went to the factory to leave a document in the office... For my father's partner."

The more she talked, the more the soldier looked suspicious. Did he see something she was failing to see? A detail which revealed him the big lie she'd just told him? Or he'd simply kept under control and he'd realised he didn't see her walking by that street that morning, to go to the factory as she was stating?

"Haas&Pohl's..." she went on, trying to get more credence. "My father... he's Mr..."

"You can go." the fair-haired man interrupted her, giving her back her ID. Viktoria remained unperturbed and she just murmured an unsure "Goodbye..."

She wasn't scared like the first time, even if she should have been, due to the power he had of unravel the truth with a simple inspection.

But she had other things to think about, so the fact just went in second place. Now she just had to hope that her father didn't notice her absence and that they hadn't called him yet to tell him about the murder occurred right in the factory's yard, which Viktoria and Ben unintentionally assisted to.

She fastened the pace: she'd already passed the "hot spot", the point where the Germans used to guard. She climbed the flat's stairs skipping many steps, but she tried to be quieter as she got closer to her apartment; after that, she pushed down the door handle slowly, as stealthy as she could. With relief, the door opened: Eva had played along with her and woke up early to turn the key in the keyhole.

At that time usually only her grandmother was up, but she wouldn't have been a problem. It was a little sad to take advantage of her illness in that way, but sometimes it was a benefit to her. On her tiptoes Viktoria walked towards her room, passing by her grandmother's bedroom, in which Eva was still asleep, and her father's from which his loud snoring came.

As she entered her room, she sighed closing the door. But when she turned to her bed, she winced.

Her grandmother was sitting there, knitting, and she smiled.

"Hi, Vicky!"

What was she doing there? Usually she never entered into her room. Had she discovered her night escape? Viktoria shuddered: her father mustn't hear her talking.

"Grandma..." she whispered, getting close. "Wait, don't make noise..." she begged with dramatic gestures, taking off her clothes as fast as she could and putting on her night vest. Her grandmother obeyed, she kept knitting with a satisfied smile.

"Come, let's go in the other room." she tried to help her standing up, holding her arm, but the old lady didn't move and Viktoria didn't insist. After a long glance, she bended her head on her knitting and went on moving the crochet quickly. The girl sighed resigned and she sat next to her.

"I don't know what to do, grandma. I don't understand anything any more." she started telling. She knew she wouldn't had a sensed answer, but that's why she was the only person she could talk freely to. She put her hands on her tired face.

"It's everything on the diary."

Viktoria raised her head suddenly.

"What did you say?" she asked, surprised.

"The diary" her grandmother replied, as she'd just said the most obvious thing in the world. The girl looked around, lost in her own room, until she found an item which didn't belong there. In fact, she'd never seen that before. It was a little leather book on her pillow: the swollen, yellowed pages seemed creased before she could even browse it. With great fascination she took it in her hands like a relic and started browsing it. They were just a few pages, written in an orderly handwriting and meticulously dated.

When Viktoria started to read, she couldn't believe her eyes.

"September 2nd 1885.

I start writing this diary, because I'm about to turn the case of the mystery dream I make since I remember. I'll write this down here.

The man I'm so in love with, puts in my hands something and he promises me to come back, then he rides away with other people dressed like him. He's undoubtedly a soldier and when he goes away I feel a great sadness in my heart, like a bad feeling. In fact the anxiety grows in me, until I found myself praying and crying on a grave, holding a jewel in my hands, probably the same the young man entrusted me to before he left. But I know that jewel doesn't belong to me. I feel I've suffered so much and lost many people I loved and all my suffering is enclosed in that necklace I hold in my hand. Suddenly, I'm old. I must say, I've maintained a certain decorum, some kind of stubbornness in my manners which makes me proud of how I've faced my life, which is maybe about to come to an end. I'm in peace with myself digging a hole under a big elm, burying that item. Then I look to the city: I'm sure it's not Vienna.

I've made many researches, I've spent hours in the library and I've finally understood that my dream takes place between XVII and XVIII century. I still don't understand which city I'm in, though. I'm going through many books about fashion in the past to find a dress similar to the one I wear in my dream.

December, 5th 1885.

I've got it, I've finally found it! Paris. I was completely off-track, I was focusing on the wrong detail! When I've finally realised that I had to focus on his uniform – my lover's – and not mine, I've found it almost right away. Paris, the old, romantic Paris! Everything is so fascinating that even if my research ends in nothing, it would leave me this sense of magic and mysterious that the other girls of my age could never feel! Now I know where to look, I know what to do."

"G-Grandma, are you saying that..." Viktoria started, but the old lady made her a sign with her hand to go on. The girl thought that if she widened her eyes a little more, they would have come out of her head, and she couldn't do nothing but keep reading. She turned the page.

June, 13th 1886.

Six months had passed since the last update, but meanwhile I've decided to leave: I'll go to Paris! My cousin Sophia will go there with her husband for their holidays and she offered me to go with them! She's a real angel, I couldn't never forget it... In the last months I've been trying to improve my French: now I can say hi like a real mademoiselle! I look forward to leave.

July, 17th 1886

It is with no doubt a magic city and for the first days I've fully enjoyed it, but I have that thing... I absolutely have to find out if it really happened or if it's just a fantasy of mine or a randomness. I went to a library. When I was burying the jewel, I was out of the town, but since then it had expanded very much, so that graveyard could be gone by now, or have been included in the borders. I've made a list of graveyards and today I'll start my research!

July, 18th 1886

I can't believe it, so many things happened that none of them seem true to me... In my hands I'm now holding... Yes, that's it! It's a silver crucifix with red stones. It seems to be also very valuable, but this is not important! It wasn't just fantasy, everything's real! The graveyard still exist, even if I couldn't find the tombstone I prayed on in my dream, everything is so different... But when I saw that big elm, I almost had a heart-attack... Even the young guardian came to see if I was fine!

Poor thing, he seemed so terrified to the idea that I could feel bad that he insisted to walk with me. But then he even allowed me to dig a hole, even though I wasn't able to explain so well, as I was really nervous. In the end, when he saw me taking out that necklace he babbled so many things that I didn't understand almost anything! He was so funny that I started laughing.

Then everything became weird. That clumsy guy... In the moment he touched the crucifix... I'm not really able to explain that, but it was like he became another person. It wasn't scary at all, on the contrary, it seemed that... I've known him since forever. And even if a few moments earlier we could barely understand one another, from that very second I didn't miss a word he said, and he seemed to understand perfectly my bad French. He told me not to tell anyone about what happened. And then, as I was leaving, he told me he wanted to see me again!

He's a very charming guy and he's really sweet. His name is Jerome."


	14. Chapter 14

_Chapter 14_

Viktoria let the diary fall on her legs, unbelieving, still with her mouth open.

"Grandma!" she exclaimed astonished. Why had she never known anything about all that sotry? Nobody ever told her how her grandparents met. Had she kept it also from everyone else? How did she explain her family her meeting with a graveyard's guardian and their relationship?

So many questions were passing from her mind that she didn't know how to start. But probably she would have never started because she was almost sure that she couldn't find her answers in that.

But she had to give it a shot.

"Why did you give me the crucifix?" she asked. That was the question she cared more about: for how fascinating and mysterious the story of how her grandparents met was, there was little to add. Now she wanted to know what was her part in that.

"The crucifix was yours." the lady answered candidly, without stop knitting.

That statement, which she'd already heard when she gave her the jewel, added a different meaning. If that item was hers, how did it come to her grandmother's hands, or to the person's she was?

Viktoria swallowed. The whole story started to scare her.

"Grandma... What was your name?" she asked. She waited for an answer in silence, but in vain. She smiled, anyway, softened, and she kissed her grandmother on her cheek.

"Thank you." she whispered, sitting there for a while, just watching her knitting and thinking that the little great woman kept that enormous secret for the whole time. And that sometimes, when she was still healthy, she could've stopped and ask something about her life, instead of being always selfish and talk about herself all the time. She would've found it out way earlier.

She patiently waited that the rest of the family woke up, then she went having a hot bath and she got dressed, as if anything had happened. But everything had happened.

And until then she'd been so stupid to ignore something so important. Not like her grandmother, who would work hard and spent her days in the library doing researches.

So that was Paris... The city she saw from the distance, from the cart that was taking her in safe. The city she felt she loved like it was her home, even if it actually wasn't. She wished she was so smart to figure it out herself.

Now she had no more doubts. The thing Ben was talking about was real. Even her grandmother lived it, they can't be all coincidences. And the thing happened to her grandfather the moment he touched the crucifix... It was exactly what happened to Ben that night. Maybe his grandfather had a part in that big web slowly untangling?

Still a couple of knot were keeping her from truth. Where was the crucifix before her grandmother got it? If it was hers, then why it had never appeared in her dreams?

When she came out of the bathroom, still full of thousands thoughts, ran into her father, now almost recovered.

"Vicky, you woke up early...!" he exclaimed seeing her already washed and dressed up. Suddenly she felt ashamed, thinking about what happened the night before. She felt guilty to have fooled him around, but she couldn't tell... She just nodded, insecure.

"What happens?" Mr. Haas asked straight away, suspicious.

"Nothing, the water was too hot, maybe." she rushed to justify. "Are you feeling better?" she asked then. It was a thing she hadn't considered until then. If her father was feeling better, it meant that...

"Yeah, I have fully recovered! There's no need for you to go to Mr. Keller tonight, I will."

"No!" she exclaimed, maybe with too much vehemence, because her father remained surprised.

"I mean... It's better if you rest one more day. Just one." she tried to make up, appealing to the health excuse. But the damage was done already. Mr. Haas looked at her suspiciously and she couldn't do anything but cringe and hope that he wouldn't ask further questions.

"Tell me... It's not that..."

"Ah, dad, you're up!" Viktoria sighed when Eva interrupted their conversation. From the look she gave her she was sure that she did that on purpose: probably she was behind the door listening and she intervened to avoid her the embarrassment.

"It's better to not rush things, though!" she supported her. "Go, have a little more rest, Vicky and I will think about everything. I'm going to work."

When she saw her sister getting close to him to kiss him, Viktoria took advantage to sneak into her room and avoid the conversation resume.

"I have to tidy up my closet!" she exclaimed, closing the door behind her and hoping that the convincing had been successful. She didn't want at all to walk in the streets by night, alone, to go visiting Ben in secret: she risked too much, she realised that.

During the whole day she tried to avoid her father and she managed to do that, even if her reflexes weren't at their best. She roamed the house, sleepy, trying to keep herself busy, because she knew that if she touched the bed or the sofa, she would've fallen asleep and she didn't want to get questions about her uncommon tiredness.

But the more the time was coming, the more the adrenaline gave her shocks that kept her wide awake. She thought that sooner or later the phone would have rung to announce the homicide occurred the previous night in the factory's yard, but nobody called. Probably the Germans had covered up everything. They didn't even announced it at the radio.

She thought about that man, his panting. She heard him, he was close, but they couldn't do anything to help him. And suddenly, he wasn't there any more. Forgotten forever, just one of many, too many, Jews who had been killed. That thought tormented her.

When she came to a certain point of the day, though, she realised that what she'd been doing was really too sneaky. What was the point in lying to her father? Anyway, the next day he would've come back to the factory, and then who knows when she could've seen Ben again... She thought that after all he should have been happy for her, even if it wasn't exactly the relationship he'd imagined for one of his daughters. But he said it himself, that Ben was a good man. In an impetus of positivity, Viktoria went into her father's room, ready to go out. She found him reading a book in bed, pretty upset for the fact that they forbidden him to move.

"Are you going out?" he asked, noticing right away that look on her face again, which this time she'd put on on purpose to introduce the conversation. "For the love of God, Vicky, could you tell me what's happening to you in these days?"

Viktoria swallowed, keeping her eyes down and leaning shyly to the closed, searching for a natural posture.

"Something happened." while she was about to say that, her mind was working so fast that she almost feared that her father could hear all her thoughts. She'd started with the intent of being completely sincere, but since when she'd got through the door, she changed her mind: maybe it wasn't necessary to tell him about her night escape. After her father question she forbade herself to tell about her dreams and everything connected to them.

In the end, her philosophy became: the less you can tell.

"Don't you tell me you've put yourself in trouble with Germans, or that..."

"No!" she rushed to interrupt him. "It's not a bad thing." well, it wasn't at all. At least for her. But she didn't have to tell him. When she raised her look, she saw her father with the face in his hands to cover what she assumed to be a mask of desperation.

"Day, I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you... He... He's really good." she ended up to whisper, lowering her tone more and more. That wasn't the speech she'd prepared, but she finished overwhelmed by emotions.

"Vicky, I have got anything against that man, he's the best person I know!" Mr. Haas burst out suddenly, making her wincing. "But it's dangerous. Do you understand? I don't want to lose you... I don't want our family to..." she heard him swallowing a hiccup. "I don't want you to end up like your mother."

Viktoria felt that her pride had been hurt. He'd pulled out her mother's story. He never talked about it. That meant he was really worried.

"It's not worth it. Not for a passing fancy."

Hearing those words, she put aside all the pity to make room for an uncontrolled rage. She clenched her firsts and looked at him like she'd never done before.

"What do you know?" she growled angry. "You weren't there! You didn't see the way he looks at me, you didn't see... the way he holds me." in her outburst she couldn't even feel ashamed for what she was saying, even thought she promised herself to keep secret all their physical contacts. "I love him, and he loves me. And it's something nobody can stop. Time didn't, bombs didn't, the Nazis won't and certainly you won't!"

Without even looking her father's reaction, Viktoria ran out of the room, of the apartment and of the building. She realised after a while that she was walking in the rain. She repeated in her mind the words she'd just spit out against her father and she realised how non-sensed they could sound for someone who didn't know the whole story. But most of all, how much they must have hurt him. It wasn't like her to act that way.

The more she got close to the factory, the more she thought she was making a mistake. Her father didn't have faults but naivety. If she didn't tell him how things actually went, how could he imagine? And it was completely understandable that he was worried about her life, she well knew she was risking it every day.

She stopped in the middle of the road, half way to the factory, and she grabbed her crucifix.

She kissed it and turned around.


	15. Chapter 15

_Chapter 15_

While her father was hugging her she couldn't do anything but thinking at the fact that even Ben made her feel that way. He made her feel safe, and that proved once again that she wasn't wrong about their mutual feelings, and that her father had to understand that.

"I'm sorry, Vicky." he said moved, caressing her head.

"I'm sorry, dad." she moaned in tears. "But it's all true, I swear it. I..." she let him go from the hug, to look at his face. "I've known it since the first time I saw him."

Mr. Haas' face contracted at first in a suffering look, which he strived to transform in a smile. In that moment he could finally see her daughter as a grown-up woman and not as the little girl who begged him to carry her on his shoulder when she was too tired to walk on. He had to let her walk on her legs now.

"I have something for you." he announced. He kissed her on her forehead and let her wait in the hall, disappearing for a few moments. When he came back, he was holding a big yellowed paper, rolled up. He gave it to Viktoria, who had already understood what that was, at that point; when she quickly opened it up, she recognised her profile in a watercolor painting, the colours so soft that it seemed to her to had entered directly in Ben's dream, whose signature in pencil was hiding in a corned.

"I found it a few years ago… Your mother must have bought it." said Mr. Haas. "I've always been wondering how Mr. Keller was able to drew you so well without seeing you."

Viktoria raised her look on her father and opened her mouth to talk, but she couldn't find any plausible excuse. Luckily, Mr. Haas didn't seem willing of know more than that.

"Then go. He must be worried about you." he tried to keep together his moved voice to seem confident with his decision. After all, that day, Viktoria had to make an important choice in coming back on her steps to say sorry. It was his turn to swallow his pride.

Viktoria rolled back the paper and put it on the table; she was incapable of saying anything without bursting into tears in that moment.

She smiled at him and hugged him one last time, before running away again. Mr. Haas could see her consciousness flying lighter than before among her dress' folds while she got away.

Ben had been worrying all day long. Incapable of sleeping despite the extreme tiredness, he'd been tormenting for all those hours wondering what was Viktoria doing meanwhile: was she looking for a proof of the fact he was wrong? Or maybe he'd frightened her so much that she wouldn't have come?

The sun started to set and he seriously feared to not see her any more. He didn't realised how much time had passed since when he started walking up and down the room, moving those few steps that the little space allowed him, ruminating and repeating in his head the last words they'd said.

And trying to remember what happened during the night. His memories were confused. Some chaotic and quick flashes suggested him that they must have spent beautiful moments together, but after his headache he couldn't remember much. Or at least, he couldn't remember what he did. Viktoria's pale and smooth skin, he clearly remembered that. The taste of her kisses, her slow but not goofy movements, her dreamy eyes and her moaning…

He felt a chill. It just didn't feel true that it was right him to provoke in her all those feelings that seemed to made her lose her mind. What did he do that was so special to paint on her face that ecstatic look? He only remembered that he collapsed exhausted and that he strived to woke up in the morning.

But luckily he woke up in time to prevent Viktoria from opening that drawer. He thought she wouldn't be so happy to see what was inside.

Suddenly, he heard some light steps running upstairs: it was her, he knew. He looked towards the manhole, enthusiastic, waiting for it to be opened.

She threw herself in his arms. Ben held her, afraid to lose her again even if she was there now. Viktoria dropped her boots covered in mud that she held in her hand and started talking.

He couldn't believe his ears. If he didn't hear it directly from Viktoria's voice, he would have said that it was just a big joke.

So he wasn't going crazy, closed in those four walls…! His theory wasn't so absurd. He'd felt a little stupid after seeing the girl's reaction when he told her his idea and for the whole day he'd been wondering if he should have shut up and think about it, looking for another possible explanation.

He was so relieved that he would have wanted to communicate to her too his satisfaction and his gratitude for talking to her dad about such a delicate argument. He wouldn't know how to face it himself, he probably would have avoided it as long as possible.

He kissed her hand's back, and then her lips. When he got away he saw a mischievous smile that slightly reminded him about the night before.

"You know..." she started, drawing from her blouse the jewel that the night before provoked him that terrible headache and, apparently, even the consequent amnesia.

"My grandmother on her diary wrote that when my grandfather touched this crucifix… It was like he'd become another person." she made it dangle in front of his face.

But he shook his head. He finally understood, and for how absurd was that theory too, he knew that the coincidences didn't have nothing to do with that story any more.

"We don't need to be other people, Vicky"

He kissed her again and more confident and he heard her moaning for the surprise. Apparently the old himself showed her a great time the previous night, but he could measure up. After all, it was always himself: he believed everything but the split personality.

Aramis, or what was his name, was part of him, he couldn't exist without Ben Keller.

With confidence, he pushed her to the bed, forcing her to back off. But as soon as she sat, something he wouldn't never expected happened. The manhole suddenly opened, making them wincing. He felt Viktoria's nails grasping his arm as she was about to be sucked up by a vortex that took her away from him.

With terror, he recognised a military uniform. It was over. Everything was over.

He couldn't do anything against the fear, the shock. He was paralysed. And he didn't fear the concentration camp, the hard work, the beating, the diseases, not even death. He was afraid for Viktoria, her sweet, little Vicky, whose muffled voice shouting his name was backgrounding his thousand thoughts: he jumped up, but he immediately saw a gun pointed at himself.

"Stop! Not one more step!" the German walked down the stairs, moving the gun from Ben to Viktoria, curled up crying on the bed.

Ben panicked. He'd always thought that in a situation like that he would have simply resigned to his fate, without trying crazy and desperate things, but everything had changed since when that lost blondie came into his life. He wondered what will the consequences be for her family, but not even for a second it take into his head to blame her for what was happening.

He simply fell on his knees.

"Please." he said, bending his head. "Please, don't hurt her… I beg you, she..."

"Ben!" a heartbroken cry and he found her next to him, on her knees. He embraced her head in a hug and he felt her tears wetting his neck, or maybe it was his mole, bleeding again.

"Please… Please, don't carry him away!" she begged the soldier, in an agonizing prayer that made her spill many tears. She hug Ben back, with an arm behind his back.

The German was not moving.

"You must follow me." he sentenced. But Ben noticed that his voice ton wasn't as decisive as he expected, and a glimmer lightened his hope.

"If you have a heart… If you have a family, a woman you love, a woman you want to marry… Then don't do it, please. Nobody will ever know and we'll pray for you everyday we've left to live."

"P- Please..." Viktoria babbled, getting up on her feet. She moved a step towards the fair-haired guy.

"Vicky." Ben called her back to stop her, but she appeared determined. She looked into the soldier's eyes with the face red and wet. She never looked down on the gun he was pointing to her.

"Please..." she murmured again, moving another step.

"Vicky, stop!" Ben firmly ordered to her: he'd seen some hesitation in the Nazi's acts, but not so many to risk a move like that.

But she didn't stop.

Slowly he saw her reaching out her trembling hand towards the man. He thought she wanted to unarm her. In that moment it seemed to him to see his dear friend Marlene in the moment he saved her life. Only her daughter could have done such a hasty thing.

The German was trembling, he almost dropped the gun at some point, but then he strengthen the grip, and he pointed it against Viktoria again.

He shook his head.

"I can't." he mumbled confused.

Viktoria smiled at him in tears and raised her hand again. With her head bended on the side looked at him as you look at the tenderness of a child or at the face of a lover.

Ben had even stopped breathing. He didn't want to do anything that could provoke instinctive reactions in the soldier.

When Viktoria's fingers touched his cheekbone, the German had a twitch and for a second Ben feared that everything was over for real. But the man didn't shot. He looked at Viktoria like a creature from another planet, like she had just opened his eyes on a truth he'd never considered before.

She put her hand on his face with a simplicity nobody else could ever be able of with a gun pointed against the stomach.


	16. Chapter 16

_Chapter 16_

Ben was astonished.

Viktoria'd touched the Nazi's cheek with a caress and he immediately lowered his gun, dropping it on the floor. Then he fell too on his knees, on the same level of the Jew in front of him.

But now no one was begging any more. There were just two shocked men surrendered one another, and a girl between them, who in some way managed to put them on the same level with such a simple gesture as a caress.

Viktoria had never been good with empathy, but in that moment she'd have tried anything to save her lover, and she wasn't even too surprised that it had worked. Of course, she was extremely relieved and grateful to God and to that man that she feared so much during their previous meetings.

She watched him on the floor, resigned and surrendered and she didn't know what he was thinking about because he kept his head down, staring at the floor, but she saw he was trembling a lot. He was soaked because of the rain, but she thought that wasn't the reason.

It came spontaneous to her, as she did shortly before, to embrace him with her arms and console him.

Ben was looking at her with his mouth opened, lost and powerless. He couldn't do anything. He pointed at the gun, but Viktoria shook her head. The situation was still too delicate and any rash action could've blown everything up.

"It wasn't my fault… I didn't want to..." he babbled confused. He covered his face with his hands and then they realised he was crying.

Viktoria had taken back control in an almost terrifying way. From the begging kitten she was a few minutes before, she'd become a confident woman who took the lead of the situation.

"It doesn't matter. Every bad thing you did… God will forgive it." while she was saying those words she realised that that man probably had on his hands many innocents' blood, but she couldn't just be angry at him, not in that moment.

"It's too late. It's too late..." he repeated.

"Vicky!" Ben suddenly exclaimed, when he saw the German reaching out his hand to get the gun on the floor; but Viktoria was quicker and she kicked it away. Right after she knelt too to the Nazi's level and took his face in her hands.

"You don't have to do this!" she firmly said, looking into his wet eyes. "Too many lives had already been wasted."

With the corner of her eye she saw Ben getting up and going to pick up the gun. She heard he was taking off the clip and the bullets, but she was too focused in trying to instil a little security in that guy in whom she couldn't find any more the harsh traits that frightened her so much at their first meeting.

"You don't understand..." he said in his strong accent. "I could have allowed them to escape… I could have… not cause her death to be useless..."

Viktoria shared another glance with Ben, thoughtful.

"I don't know what you're talking about..."

"Marlene Haas." Viktoria's heart skipped a beat. "She was your mother, wasn't she?"

She was so surprised in hearing that name, that let her arms dropping down to her side and stood still staring at him with her big eyes wide open, pointing to him but looking at the emptiness in the same time. Ben intervened. He knelt on one leg to be able to look better at the German's face and put a hand on his shoulder.

"How do you know that name?" asked him quickly, anxious to know the answer.

But Viktoria had already put two and two together.

"They… They didn't make it, right…?" she asked, remaining stuck. She couldn't believe it. For all those years they've been told her a big lie.

When the man shook his head, sorrowful, she imagined the whole scene. The pool of blood extending under her mother's body, her father's screams, the soldiers trying to catch the fugitives…  
But up to that moment she'd thought that her mother's sacrifice saved some lives, but instead…

"I caught them. I could have let them go, but… I couldn't betray this..." he put a hand on his arm, ripping off the red band with the swastika on "… stupid, useless..." and he threw it on the ground. "symbol of destruction."

A few moments of silence were interrupted in the end from Viktoria's astonished, flat voice.

"They were just two kids."

"I know." he replied, covered in shame, his head down.

"They were… Her pupils."

"I know, I..."

Viktoria hid her face in her hands and she stayed like that.

She didn't hear Ben helping the SS getting up, nor the grateful words he said, but just the manhole closing and her lover embracing her shoulders and leaning his forehead against one of them.

"I'm sorry, Vicky. Marlene… She will be forever a heroin."

Still the girl wouldn't react and wouldn't show intention to move.

"If she didn't do what she did… You probably wouldn't have the courage today to… Save our lives."

It was true, completely. It was the only thing she thought while walking to the gun pointing at them: her mother and what she did, her last, extreme act of protest against a system that went scorched earth.

She dried her eyes, rubbing her face with her hands and going back looking at the man.

"We're alive." she whispered, as she just realised in that moment that the risk was over. On the ground, next to her, the Nazi's ripped band suggested her that it hadn't been a nightmare; it happened for real.

And it was because of her.

That day she'd saved two lives.

"She would be so proud of you, you know?" Ben smiled at her, tenderly.

Viktoria kissed him a long time. They stayed like that, together, that they forgot they were two different people.

She didn't want to relive in her mind that terrible moment they've just had, but only the moment when she raised her head and she saw Ben, and she understood they were alive.

But there was a sentence that kept echoing in her ears, and she had to put her mind at rest. She got away from him.

"Wait."

She found funny the fact that Ben didn't want to stop kissing her and kept looking for her lips even after she interrupted the contact between them. She laughed, like she hadn't done a long time, like they hadn't risked their lives shortly before.

"Ben!" she twitted, trying to avoid his kisses, that ended on her neck. She found herself gasping even more, forgetting about the question she wanted to ask, but then she decided she could do both enjoying his attentions and talk.

"Is it true? You want to marry me?" she panted, while he'd already pushed his face in the notch between her shoulder and her neck and fiddled with the buttons on the back of her dress.

At that point he stopped for a second and he went back to her face's level to deeply stare at her eyes.

"I would never lie about this, not even in front of ten Nazis ready to shoot me." after he said that, he went back kissing her and easily picked her up, carrying her on the bed.

Viktoria was at the top of the world. She was staring the ceiling in the shadow with a dreamy look and wet eyes: it was really the best moment of her life.

She giggled again when his beard tickled her chest.

"You don't even know… If I'm going to say yes..." she went on chuckling, provoking him. He smiled in a mischievous way too when, taking off her dress, he alternate his gaze from the crucifix to her face.

"You'll see that I'll make you shout the answer..." he kissed her lips." … And..." he went on kissing her chin. "I bet..." he went down on her neck. "… That it's going to be a yes." he looked at her one last time, before he lowered his head to kiss the crucifix.

But something stopped him. Viktoria's serious look was tacitly criticising him, while she was keeping away from the jewel with both her hands. She took off the necklace and put it on the table.

"I just want to love Ben, now and forever."

She knew that Aramis was part of him, and of course she enjoyed the previous night, during which his past took over. But it wasn't Aramis the man she loved, it was Ben Keller, that sweet, romantic guy that would have put a ring on her finger, once the war would have been over. While contorting herself in pleasure at every touch of him, she saw herself walking on the aisle. He would have turned looking at her with his dreamy eyes full of hope and would have smiled to her.

She was sure that Ben wouldn't have minded if sometimes Anne and Aramis meet once again thanks to them. She wouldn't have minded at all.

After all, Anne would always been part of her.


	17. Chapter 17

_Chapter 17_

That dream was different from the others.

Viktoria felt part of it, it was like she was watching from above, an invisible butterfly moving along with the previous host of her soul and her lover. But at the same time she could feel the sensations that Anne was feeling, like that surge of joy in watching her son moving his first steps. The boy had grown already, enough to be able to stand on his chubby legs, striving to not fall down, and trying to walk in her direction. She saw herself smiling, picking him up in the moment he stumbled, and lifting him up laughing.

"That's great, my love!"

The boy giggled gurgling.

Aramis sat next to them, with his hair still wet and his shirt opened. He touched her lips with a kiss and then he kissed her hand too, in the usual ritual he couldn't lose.

"I could be almost jealous." he commented, mischievous, faking jealousy for the affection the girl was addressing to their son.

"Wait for your turn." she playfully scold him, kissing him back and then drawing her attention on Philippe again, whose belly she tickled. Aramis giggled again under his moustache and before getting up he pinched the boy's cheek.

"Just because it's you." he told him seriously. The boy looked at him like he was understanding, but right after he went away, he chuckled again, amused by the funny faces Anne was making to him.

"I've found another good customer today. We should celebrate." the former Musketeer announced, tying his shirt in front of the mirror. "He had two great pistols he wanted to change."

Anne didn't listen his last words, she was still on the celebration, that interested her certainly more.

"That's fantastic, honey." she happily twitted.

"I wonder where he got them. He didn't look like a sold-"

A thud interrupt their talking. The door had been wide opened all of a sudden, slamming against the wall so hard that a yell slipped out of Anne's mouth.

Seven armed guards entered almost marching in their house and the past came to her mind like a cold shower. She had a chill and instinctively held her baby. A man read some words from a paper, which sounded pretty official, but neither Anne nor Viktoria could follow them. Treason, kidnapping of the Dauphin, desertion, evasion… Death sentence.

"No!" she heard Aramis screaming. The soldiers drew their swords, but he was unharmed and she didn't want to watch. "I don't know what you're talking about. I am a deserter, but my wife is not the Queen!"

They both knew that it was a desperate call, but Anne knew that he was trying to buy time. He would have just delay their deaths by few minutes.

"Marie… Her name's Marie. My son's name is Philippe." she heard him repeating the same story they've told to the whole village, that place so remote into the Pyrenees and so far from Paris, where they'd felt safe right away…

"And I'm Aramis, a deserter. The only to blame."

Anne didn't dare to turn around. She just wanted to gave him a last look, but she was terrified. Even if she had never seen those men, she could have identified her: there were so many hitches in Aramis' plan that she wondered if he really thought it could've worked.

"Good game." one of them commented. "It's them, right?"

An eighth man made his way through the soldiers.

"You…!" Aramis exclaimed, surprised and angry.

Anne heard the steps coming closer and held the baby even more to her chest. Philippe was screaming so loud that he'd become all red. The Queen saw the man smiling at her and she felt in some way violated; she would have wanted to beg him, to pray him, but in her heart she'd resigned to the end. They'd been fighting up to that moment, they ran, they hid and they finally found happiness. It lasted a short time, but she knew it was nobody's fault, just the man's who reported them. In that moment, Anne noticed the pistols to his belt and realised he must have been the new customer Aramis was talking her about right before.

"It's them." he sentenced, after taking a long look at her.

"Take them." another guard ordered, impassive.

The pictures became blurred, voices muffled; even if she was living the scene from two different, but connected, points of view, Viktoria was striving to understand what was happening.

Philippe was crying, screaming and she did the same. Aramis was kicking, yelling her name and the boy's, trying to reach her, but she couldn't free herself from the grip.

Then she passed out.

Viktoria, instead, would've wanted to wake up, but she couldn't

She wanted to get back to safety, to Ben, knowing that they were okay, hearing him saying that they would've get married soon. But as long as she tried, she couldn't wake up.

She was there, invisible and powerless, looking at the soldiers knocking out her twin hitting her on the head. Aramis fought to the end, he screamed Anne's name at the top of his lungs, but she couldn't hear him. One of the guards took the baby, but the former Musketeer couldn't do anything about it, because as soon as he realised it, he was hit too.

The guards carried them out, dragging them, and they put them on a cart. The man who reported them received a generous reward and went away, satisfied.

And she stand there, on the threshold of the deserted house, looking at the cart getting away. All the people in the village was there watching, but nobody intervened. Silent and scary, when the guards disappeared from their view, they went back doing what they were doing, leaving her there, powerless.

She looked back and saw the fire still burning, the cradle still, the mirror in which Aramis was looking, reflecting nothing but a room cleared of the life it hosted.

She felt dizzy too, maybe because of the knock on the head, maybe because everything happened so fast that she didn't know what fate was trying to tell her, but soon everything became clearer.

The room quickly changed into another scenario, and Viktoria was Anne again.

She saw everything from her eyes again, but she kept hoping to wake up and went back being Viktoria, because she didn't like what was happening.

She walked escorted by two guards. She couldn't hear well yet, but she couldn't hear disapproval's screams, words that embarrassed her and made her blush.

She was wearing that white gown she wore when she was in prison: she knew what was happening. The soldiers didn't hold her because she couldn't run anywhere.

She felt cold on her neck, and when she touched it, she realised that her hands where tied up together and that her blond hair were gone. In its place, a ridiculous bob humiliated her even more, even if that should have been the last thing to worry about.

Right away, it take second place. She heard the crowd exploding in an angry shouting, a roar of discontent raised to the stage she could glimpse in front of her.

She tried to run in that direction, but one of the two guards stopped her, holding her shoulder.

"I wouldn't do it." he shook his head. But Anne understood that after all that soldier was still paying her respect and he was saying that just to protect her.

"I want to see." she said, stubborn, with her head held high.

The two man shared a look, then they escorted her to the steps that kept her away from death. There, next to a black-masked man, she saw Aramis.

Even the fair-haired man, the one who had her arrested the first time, was there. He was watching satisfied, while the other four Musketeers in a row were saying goodbye to her lover. There was also Constance with them, and she felt her heart bursting. Anne looked around, but she couldn't find the King: she would have wanted to ask him for clemency, appealing to all those years they'd spent together, happy years, in some way, despite the society and tradition's limitations. Something brought her back with her mind to when they were younger and to the time she managed to love him. She was sure he still loved her, and she wondered how could he kill the person he loved.

"Aramis..." she whispered. The Musketeer couldn't hear her. She saw him hugging his mates and his Captain. The younger of them seemed inconsolable. Constance was holding his arm, hiding her face in his uniform's folds.

When Aramis came to him, he put something in his hand, a jewel that both Anne and Viktoria knew well and towards which the fair-haired man threw a hateful look.

Viktoria would have wanted to smile at him with a smirk: she knew he could have never put his hands on that crucifix because, after all those years, it had arrived in her grandmother's hands anyway. Another thing became clear: the young man her grandmother dreamed about was probably that Musketeer. That meant that her grandmother… She must have been that lady-in-waiting who stayed to her side to the end. Constance. Now everything was clear.

Even her grandmother and her grandfather met in another life. But neither Anne nor Viktoria could concentrate too long on a single thing in that moment. Everything was too confused, the screaming, the crying, the King's absence.

Aramis turned to her just for a short moment and suddenly everything disappeared. It was like just the two of them were important to the world and the Queen stopped crying. She nodded, as he'd just sent her a telepathic message, because she knew what he would have wanted to tell her. Then, when he looked away from her, the reality hardly hit her again.

With the cheering crowd, the man knelt keeping his head down. The waiting lasted just the time to let him murmur a last prayer.

His lips just had time to say "Amen".

And then it was her turn.


	18. Chapter 18

_Chapter 18_

Viktoria winced, sweated and terrified, she wide opened her eyes, suddenly waking Ben too, who was sleeping next to her.

She searched for a contact with her hands, unintentionally scratching his shoulder in the heat of the moment and striving for catching breath with deep hiccups.

"Calm down. Calm down..." he whispered, grabbing her face in his hands.

"Ben, we are… Our moles… And the crucifix..." she kept jabbering, apparently with no logic sense. But the man seemed to understand.

"I know." he said, calm. "But it's all over now."

When Viktoria understood that he must have done the same dream, she relaxed and let Ben hug her, holding her in a comfortable grip.

"It was the most terrible nightmare I've ever done." she whispered, still shaken.

"We're here now. It's all over." he repeated, caressing her head.

"Viktoria?" a voice frozen the blood in her veins. She hadn't completely calmed down yet after the dream that made her relive her death, and now she was again in a situation that surely would have put her in trouble. The man who had just spoken made them jump out of bed. They both sat and saw a portly figure standing on the top of the stairs, right under the opening of the manhole.

"What…?" mumbled Mr. Pohl, her father's partner, walking down the stairs slowly, astonished.

"Mr. Pohl!" the girl exclaimed, trying to get up, but the shame took over: she was wearing just her underwear and she had to cover herself with the sheet. Ben, instead, jumped up, still bare naked, raising his hands in sign of surrender.

"What the hell…?" the man didn't understand what was happening and kept alternate his look from Ben to Viktoria; in the end he stopped on him, staring at the young Jew from top to bottom, who kept stepping back with his hands up.

Viktoria didn't know what to say. At first she wondered how he found them out, but she answered to that question herself, reminding when the night before she took out her boots covered in mud to not leave footprints on the floor: apparently, the German soldier didn't take the same precautions and accidentally leaded that man to them.

"A… Jew?" he asked, scornful, almost disgusted.

"Mr. Pohl, I can explain..." Viktoria mumbled in a low voice, getting up and dragging with her the sheet that was covering her body. She tried to put between them to prevent that man from hurting Ben.

But she realised right away that it wouldn't be easy to convince him, like she did the night before with the Nazi.

That man's look was full of such loathing, and it seemed like he didn't even notice her: all he could see was the Jew that his partner had been hiding in their factory for who knows how long, putting their lives and their company at risk, without even involve him.

Ben shook his head, keeping his hands in view.

"I don't want to hurt anybody." he declared, innocent.

"I'm the one who wants to hurt somebody!" the man burst out, walking to him intimidating and almost running over Viktoria, but she managed to put herself between them.

The sheet fell on the floor, but she didn't care too much, not when her lover's life was at risk. She put a hand on the man's shoulder, trying to gently push him back.

"Please, please!" she exclaimed, but Mr. Pohl rudely moved her arm away.

"Don't touch me! You're a shame for society and for your family." he said, pointing his finger to her and suddenly embarrassing her for being there, half naked in front of a man she barely knew. "I should have known that you were like your mother. A shameless sinner. And if your father approves all of this… Then he deserves the prison camp too!"

Viktoria stood still, feeling powerless and hurt. Nobody had never put it that way, she thought that the love between her and Ben was the most innocent thing in the world and not even for a moment she would thought she was committing neither a crime, nor a sin to the Lord's eyes.

"Please… Don't send him away." she said in a low voice, but without lowering her look.

"Send him away?" the man exclaimed, angry. "I tell you what's going to happen now. I'll call the Germans and they will carry away both him and your father, and the factory will be safe!"

"No!" the girl cried out. "Please, we'll give you everything you want!" she spelt the words to made the concept clear, shaking her head and begging him with every gesture of her body and face.

"Vicky." she heard Ben's voice calling her name behind her and when she turned with her eyes full of tears, she saw him pointing a gun to Mr. Pohl.

She was so shocked that the thing didn't even surprise her so much. She saw the drawer opened, and she remembered the morning when she was about to find it out, but then Ben woke up and stopped her from looking inside it. She stepped back to clear his line of fire.

Mr. Pohl raised his arms. His face red for anger became pale and in his little eyes wide open they could read pure terror.

Ben looked at Viktoria and she nodded, impassive. But his finger hesitated on the trigger, and in the end he lowered the gun with a trembling sigh.

He wasn't like her, he could never being able to kill someone to save himself. But after all, Viktoria was relieved too, although for other reasons: they could have never be able to get rid of the corpse without being seen.

"Go away." he said to the man that, still scared to death, didn't have the courage to move.

"No!" Viktoria esclaimed. "He will tell!"

"I won't. I won't, let me go and I swear I won't tell anyone." Mr. Pohl begged. While he was in panic, his double chin trembled like a pudding.

Ben turned to Viktoria with a melancholic air and she replied with an interrogative look. He smiled to her but his eyes were sad. It reminded her of the look that Aramis gave to Anne right before being decapitated. Then she understood.

"Don't do it." he prayed, opening her eyes wide.

"It's over, Vicky." he smiled, resigned. "You have to know when it's over."

"Don't say that, Ben. Don't do it, I beg you." she was incapable of moving, she just wanted to run to him, but her leg were petrified and the only half step she could do in his direction was incredibly hard. She completely forgot of the other person in the room, and addressed all her prayers to the man she loved. "We can hide anywhere else. We can… Why it has to be you? Your life is worth much more than this man's!" she suddenly burst, mad. Everything was happening just because of a useless racism, because of a stubborn, selfish person.

"Because we're not the ones to choose who's going to die." he replied, calm; he kept smiling at her gently. "I don't want to be a trouble any more for your family. This was the deal with your father. Otherwise, I would never allowed him to help me."

So her father knew… And he allowed him to keep a gun. So he wouldn't be able to release any declaration, not even under torture, and say her father's name. In that way, maybe, he could've get away with it.

"But think about me, Ben! How can you do something like that and leave me alone?"

He smiled in a way that Viktoria thought he was about to burst out laughing. On one hand, it bothered her deeply the fact that he was still so calm, knowing what was about to happen; on the other hand, she preferred to see him apparently relaxed than panicking, like her.

"Don't you understand, Vicky? It's not the end of everything." he raised the gun slowly, putting it against his head. Viktoria knew that if she moved, he would have shot before, so she stayed and looked powerless, without even being able to steal one last kiss.

"I'll see you in our next life."

And then he pulled the trigger.

His body didn't even touch the floor yet, that Viktoria had already shouted a heartbreaking scream and threw herself on him. She saw her white vest becoming red, when she hugged him. His weight forced her to let him collapse on the ground to keep holding him and she didn't let him go not even when Mr. Pohl ran away, scared and confused.

Viktoria cried all of her tears. In the end she found herself combing the man's hair with her fingers, murmuring a lullaby her mother used to sing to her.

Then she got up, completely covered in blood and slowly walked to the table, next to the bed where, just a few minutes before, they'd slept together for the last time. She raised her look up to the little window through which the first ray of sunshine came in while she squeezed the jewel in her hands so hard to wound herself. The album in the open drawer drew her attention and she flip through it with a half smile and her eyes entranced. She sift through tens, maybe hundreds of painting's drafts of her. From the beginning, she found many portraying her mother, but most of them were dedicated to herself, anyway. The more they were recent, the more they were accurate, until she found herself catapulted in Ben's endless fantasy: she saw their wedding, their baby gradually growing up, a love that kept going on page after page, drawing after drawing, until their old-age together. A couple of old people from behind was holding their hands in front of the Eiffel Tower on the last page of the album.

Viktoria hesitated on that sketch more than the others. She left the album on the table, then she went back to Ben.

He seemed so peaceful, that she suddenly felt the fear slip away from her. She kissed the crucifix and put it on his neck. By doing it, she reminded when Anne did the same with Aramis. When everything started. She smiled.

In the end, she grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it, like he did many times. Upstairs. Mr. Pohl's voice, excited and impatient, was giving directions to what seemed to be a large group of soldiers running to her father's office.

Viktoria took the gun from Ben's hands. She calmly raised it, pointing it to her head, while saying a prayer.

Her lips had just time to say "Amen".

 _[There's an extra chapter! Coming real soon]_


	19. Chapter 19

_Chapter 19_

Iris jumped in her bed.

With her light eyes wide open she looked around, but even if she realised to be in her own bedroom, she wasn't able to calm down. She combed her blond hair with her fingers, spreading the sweat of her soaked forehead, while she gasped for breath and kept bouncing her look from one side of the bedroom to the other, looking for a contact with reality.

She'd never done a nightmare so realistic. And most of all, she couldn't believe that story was the explanation to all of the doubts she had since when she was little.

She had to stay in bed for long minutes, before she could recover enough to get up. The Barcelona's weather was particularly cruel that summer, but the air conditioning helped her to sleep well, usually. For that reason she thought it was so weird to have the pyjama soaked in sweat for twitching during the dream.

She opened the night stand's drawer and stand still for a moment staring at the item in that, like she was missing the courage to pick it up. It always fascinated her, but at the same time she feared it. She knew that behind that silver jewel hanging from the necklace that fell between her fingers, there was a long story. Her mother always told her that it came from Vienna, but when she gave it to her, she told her that it was hers, and she'd always thought that the way she spoke to her that time was really weird.

It was like she implied that it had always been hers, but she'd never seen it before her mother gave it to her. When she picked it the first time, it looked too showy for her, but she realised that it brought a long story with itself. It was exactly like in her dream.

That girl, Viktoria, and her grandmother, the crucifix, that man and their memories, the Queen, the soldier… And in the end, the shot.

Iris pressed a hand on her temple, exactly in the point where a little, brown birthmark was showing on her pale skin. When the headache stroke her, strangely, the pain always started from there. She asked how her subconscious could have elaborated such an intricate story to explain her headaches and the crucifix' origin.

She dropped it in the drawer and closed it. She closed her eyes and let out a long exhale, trying to calm down. Her hands were still shaking. Could it be not a dream, but a memory, for real…? The thought terrified her. There was a way to find it out: remembering the names, a simple search on the internet could have removed all doubt.

But she couldn't afford it now. Her cellphone's alarm had been ringing for a few minutes by then, even if Iris didn't notice it so much, overwhelmed by her thoughts. When she realised it, she turned it off and she went to the bathroom.

The shower's water didn't run for too long, because she had no time: she couldn't be late. Along with her sweat, she washed away also every tormenting thought about the weird dream.

Her phone rang for a dozens of times while she was in the shower; on the screen the name of "Celia" was flashing. After all those ringing, she hanged, resigned, displaying a lost call on Iris' phone. She put some flip-flops on her feet and she dried up, then she went back in her bedroom and wore a long, elegant dress, night blue, that just fit her and that the night before she'd hanged outside the closet. The veiled cloth flew around at every move, making her feel like a princess. Along with it, she had prepared also a pair of shoes of the same colour, high-heeled.

It took her a while to put some make up on her face and to fix her hair, but in the end she managed to wear it up and adorn it with some elegant hairpins, with some pearls that perfectly matched her earrings and necklace.

Even her purse was ready. She grabbed the phone and looked around to check if she hadn't forgotten anything; her look stuck on the night stand. She blinked with her long eyelashes many times, then she took a look on the screen of the phone she was holding and she read her sister's lost call. After another moment of hesitation, she ran to open the drawer and she took the crucifix, putting it in the purse.

She didn't know why she did that, but she felt much better. While getting out of her home, she called back her sister on the phone. It must have been something important, considering that they had to see each others in a few minutes. But the voice mail answered.

Celia was the only person she knew capable of spending at the phone even the last moment before her own wedding. She just hoped that she didn't resent for the fact she wasn't there helping her with the preparations, but the night before she exaggerated a little in partying with her friends and she could have never woken up to go with her.

Iris wasn't for sure the best example of empathy, even if she loved her sister so much. But when speaking about those girlish stuff, she couldn't feel not even a little comprehension for the girls who lost their mind at the thought of spending the morning squawking around the bride, helping her to wear make up and fixing her hair. She could barely did it on herself: she would have been a fish out of water in that context, and would have felt completely useless.

She went out in the street and started looking for her father's car, but she couldn't find it. The time they scheduled had passed for a few minutes, though, and he was usually punctual, unlike her.

She lowered again the look on her phone to call him, but the sound of a car's door opening, close to her, drew her attention.

She couldn't believe it.

From that black car parked a few meters far from her apartment, the most charming guy she'd ever seen came out. His long, wavy hair, his penetrating look, his overgrown moustache and beard gave him a wild air, but from the start Iris could read his soul like an open book. Because it was him.

It was Ben, it was Aramis, it was the man of her dream and he was there, in his suit. And he was perfect.

He smiled to her, waving his hand, but she couldn't move a muscle, while she stared at him astonished. Was he really waving at her? Or was she still dreaming?

Her phone's ringing in her hands made her wince and without even looking who was calling her, she picked up with a low voice, without being able of taking off her eyes from the guy walking to her with his carefree air and a friendly smile.

"Hello?"

"Iris, I called you earlier!" her sister's excited voice exclaimed. "Dad can't come to pick you up, the florist made a mess and he had to go fix it, but don't worry, a friend of Nicolas is coming!"

By the time Celia closed the sentence, Iris found herself facing that fascinating character which identity had just been revealed to her.

"You're Iris, I suppose." when he spoke, a chill ran up her back to her nape. Her sister's voice on the other side of the phone seemed a far tweet, and she couldn't understand any more what she was babbling about. She nodded with an entranced look, sliding the phone down on her cheek. She must have been so red, because she felt her face burning in flames.

"I'm Manuel." the guy reached out his hand and Iris weakly raised hers, with the intent of shake them, but instead of it, he grabbed it and pressed its back against the lips, slightly bending his head, kissing it in a perfectly natural way.

She dreamt that too. The sensation she felt in that moment seemed so familiar and obvious to her that not even for a second she thought it was a really unusual gesture for the situation.

"So… If you're ready, we should go." he went back smiling to her, a little embarrassed. He seemed more impressed than her for kissing her hand for real. She understood it wasn't something he usually did with the girls, and while Iris was following him to his car, she noticed a certain discomfort growing in Manuel's acting. He rubbed his head and he never turned back to see if she was following him.

She didn't know what to say. She would have wanted to tell him everything, to ask him a million questions. Did he dream about her too? Why did he kiss her hand? Did he remember about Viktoria or Anne?

He started driving towards the church, but Iris noticed he was really goofy and embarrassed, so that it was her to break the ice. She cleared her throat, before daring a random question.

"So… How do you know Nicolas?"

"Me? Ah, oh, well… We were in school together. At the University, I mean." he babbled.

While he was talking, the girl had finally the chance to take another look to his face, to analyse better his traits. She wanted to deceive herself that it was just her fantasy, but it wasn't like that: he was identical to her dream's characters.

All of a sudden, the air coming in through the window moved a lock of his hair from the forehead. It revealed another disconcerting truth: on his right temple he had a light-brown birthmark just like Iris'.

Manuel looked at her with the tail of his eye and when he felt the insistence of the girl's look, he became red from his neck up. He coughed, fixing his tie like if he was running out of air, but he kept feeling Iris' glance on himself.

"Ehm… Did I say… Or did something…?" he was about to confusedly ask, before the girl interrupted him with an exclamation of pain.

"Ouch!" and instinctively she pressed a hand against her temple, squeezing her eyes. Her usual headache sent her a pain in a point real close to her birthmark, forcing her to rub it like she used to.

"A- Are you okay?" he asked right away, worried.

"Ah… Yes… I mean, no..." the girl murmured, lowering her hear and covering her eyes with the hands, to not see the light.

"I'm pulling over." Manuel announced. Iris would have wanted to tell him that it wasn't necessary, but the headache prevented her from saying anything. She heard the car slowing down and then stopping, and she heard his seat belt being unbuckled, and she felt his eyes on her even if she wasn't looking.

"What can I do?" he asked. But in that moment Iris felt the pain going away, and a few seconds after she was able again to look at the light.

She turned to him with her eyes wet and they looked at each other for endless seconds. Manuel seemed embarrassed and enchanted at the same time, but clumsiness won and he drew his attention away from her. Attention that Iris tried to catch back again.

In a hesitating gesture, she moved a lock of hair from his forehead and she revealed that birthmark, in the same identical position of hers. It was like Ben and Viktoria's moles.

"I bet you… You suffer from migraines too." she declared. She wasn't one hundred percent sure before saying it, but once she said it, she became confident of the answer. In fact, she read it on his face before he could even reply.

"How…?" he said, surprised. The girl moved a lock of hair from her face and showed him her little imperfection. He looked at it astonished, like he'd just seen an alien.

That was the moment Iris reminded a thing she'd never considered before. It was the thing that gave Viktoria the definitive answer to all her questions. And the sweet, brave Viktoria still lived in her. She clearly sensed her like she sensed Anne and both of them, in that moment, seemed to be shouting her to do it, to not miss the chance for anything in the world… Both of those women she never met were telling her that the person she was staring at was the one she'd expected for her whole life, even if she knew nothing about him.

Her hands impatiently searched in her purse, until she found it. It were them, it were Anne and Viktoria that morning, they pushed her to take it, and Iris didn't get it until she felt again the pulse to do something hasty. Even the conscientious Anne was pushing her to follow her instinct.

She pulled out the crucifix and drew her eyes on Manuel again, who was looking at her dazed. She saw him raising his hand and as soon as he touched it, Iris got a feeling of déjà-vu.  
His reaction was the same as Ben's. He touched his temple in the point where he'd got the birthmark, in the point where… Ben shot himself. He also closed his eyes whimpering for the pain, but she didn't worry at all. She was amazed: it was going exactly how she'd expected. She put back the crucifix in her purse and stayed watching the scene; Manuel's migraine went easing, or at least, she guessed from his breathing that became regular again.

He finally moved his hand from his face and turned to her.

Tears ran down from her eyes, smudging her make-up, but she didn't care at all. It was him. She sensed it inside her, like a warm hug which blew her heart of an ecstatic joy.

He smiled at her with his accomplice air that reminded her of the happy moments they spent together, their life at the village, their baby, the first time they found each other again, the nights in the hideout, his kisses, his touches…

Manuel slowly raised his hand and caressed her face, with a confidence that surely didn't belong to his attitude, for how much she'd seen. Iris snuggled in that gesture, she bended her head and enjoyed his touch. Then his hand slid on her nape. For a moment they looked each other in the eyes; in their eyes there was a burning desire that couldn't wait a second more. Manuel pulled her toward himself gently but confidently, and kissed her with passion.

Their souls were tangled together once again, finally free to love each other, and Iris felt as light as a feather, while two sudden flashbacks showed her Anne and Viktoria. Their faces were basically identical to his, and both of them were smiling at her in tears.

Iris laughed, leaning her forehead to Manuel's shoulder. He held her in a strong hug.

She laughed and laughed and she couldn't stop the tears from running down her cheeks, soaking his suit.

He kissed her hair and smiled himself.

"It's you..." Iris sobbed in a low voice, grabbing his jacket like she was afraid he could've ran away.

"I told you I'll found you again..."

 _[The saga will continue. There are many parts in the plot you may want to read more about. Next series won't be about Aramis and Anne anymore, but I hope you'll follow me to the end!]_


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